


On the Road to Peace

by leslielol



Category: Captain America (Movies), Justified, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Implied Relationships, M/M, Murder, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-17
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-01-25 10:03:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1644803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leslielol/pseuds/leslielol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Potomac River still weighing heavy on his clothes and hair, and his mission incomplete, the Winter Soldier goes back to an empty base, a bunker blown from the inside. He checks the other--it's also gone, stinking of fire and ash. Then he waits, stupid and scared, on a designated street corner, expecting a pick-up. None comes and after three days, he begins to recognize his own hunger.<br/><i>No one finds him.</i> He begins to doubt anyone is even looking for him. He returns to D.C., consumed by a thought, a <i>name.</i> In search of Steve Rogers, he finds his own: Bucky Barnes. </p><p>  <i>A Captain America/Justified crossover fic.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> \- For my champions, zenillusion and jaegerpilot! 
> 
> \- This fic is slow goings--I'm a bit out of practice after a couple months of writing nothing but history and policy junk for school. I'm still SO BUMMED about season 5 of _Justified_ , but _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_ was so DANG GOOD I couldn't stay away. 
> 
> \- Title taken from the Tom Waits song. 
> 
> \- This fic contains broad spoilers for both _Justified_ and _Captain America: The Winter Soldier._
> 
> \- CA:TWS belongs to Marvel, Justified to its makers, and I own nuthin'.

The Potomac River still weighing heavy on his clothes and hair, and his mission incomplete, the Winter Soldier goes back to an empty base, a bunker blown from the inside. He checks the other--besides D.C., there’s one in Berlin. It’s also gone, stinking of fire and ash. Then he waits, stupid and scared, on a designated street corner, expecting a pick-up. None comes and after three days, he begins to recognize his own hunger. He leaves, which is something he vaguely remembers as not working out for him the last time he tried it. That was in 1972, and he didn’t wake up until the 80s. 

But _no one finds him._ He begins to doubt anyone is even looking for him.

He returns to D.C., consumed by a thought, a _name._ In search of Steve Rogers, he finds his own: Bucky Barnes. 

-

 _"Who is he?"_ The Winter Soldier takes another finger. He grips, twists, and tears flesh and bone from its source. Then he flings the offending piece across the room, where it joins others like it, and toes. 

There's a photograph on the table between them. The Winter Soldier retrieved it from the rubble of an underground Army training base in New Jersey some months ago. He's stared at it every night, and he's staring at it, now. 

"Sergeant James Barnes!" The man cries, but the answer means as little to the Winter Soldier as it did a half hour ago, or eleven misplaced digits. 

_Liar,_ the Winter Soldier thinks. There's a place the truth hides, in most men. It may not be physical, but it is geographic. His Masters trained him to spot it. Truth rests at the edge of a man's soul. It can be knocked free with brute force, or swept away by a rush of blood. The Winter Soldier means to disturb a human soul.

He grips the man’s forearm, now, and readies to make his earlier work appear needless. He grips, twists. 

_"What was he?"_

The Mayor of New Jersey is sobbing, now. "A man! Just a man!" 

The Winter Soldier tears through muscle and sinew and bone. He comes away with a nifty prize, but knows it isn't something he can keep. That isn't the point, anyway. He means to leave the thing behind and does so. 

He wanders through the ornate house, taking the stairs to further distance himself from the incessant screams. They’ll turn to gasps and the man will choke on his last precious breaths. It’s a comforting pattern.

The Winter Soldier arrives in the living room, which is warm and plush and comfortable. He spies a series of crystal vases laid out in a row and thinks about returning to the upstairs bedroom for the fingers, but decides against it.

The arm rests decoratively above the fireplace, surrounded by family photographs and Christmas tinsel. 

The screaming stops. The Winter Soldier pauses in a moment of muted horror to observe his good work. He remembers what he’s searching for, but cannot fathom the means he has chosen to find it. The arm is leaking over the mantle, spotting the pristine marble fireplace. 

He wonders how he got here--again. 

-

The hills are sulking and dark, or maybe Sam is projecting his temperament onto the landscape. 

He glances at the map laid over his knee and then at his phone. The GPS comes up with nothing, which confirms the doubts Sam has been harboring long before they cross into Kentucky. Long before West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont… before Ireland, Great Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Bulgaria, Greece… 

_Istanbul,_ Sam thinks. That’s when he first began to doubt that he--and even Steve--could see this task through. The Winter Soldier was always always more brutal, more cunning. It’s an easy combination to best the soft-hearted, which defines Steve Rogers to a fault.

Time and again, they miss the Winter Soldier. Their hands full of his bloodied victims, he slips away, unnoticed.

All Sam and Steve have going for them is Steve’s determination. Sam hates to think it’s not enough.

Steve is in the passenger seat for a change, his knee drawn up so that he can balance a notebook against it. He’s usually taking notes or reading intelligence Natasha has been feeding them. Tonight, however, it’s too dark to do much of anything. He doodles absently, until the drawing takes shape and he struggles not to continue. 

“This is Bruce Springsteen,” Sam says, then frowns as the radio cuts out. “Or, it was.” 

“I know,” Steve says, squinting at the page and fixing an errant mark, “I’ve met him. Some… benefit, charity thing of Stark’s.” Then, because it’s where most of their conversations go these days, Steve adds, “Definitely not Hydra.” 

“No, he’s about as all-American as you,” Sam smiles. “Maybe more so.” He says it like he’s trying to start an argument on the finer points of patriotism, but of course Steve only shrugs, nods, assumes Sam knows what he’s talking about. 

Sam wishes that was the case when they took their little adventure stateside. Following the Winter Soldier around Europe and Western Asia was one thing--they could get around well enough on metros, trains, and on foot--but coming home, _turning inland,_ their methods left a lot to be desired. Sam wanted something roomy, to allow for space to stretch out in the backseat. Literally, the best the ashen remains of SHIELD could offer: four-wheel drive, cruise control, heated seats. Instead, they were taking wide turns in a rusty old truck that knew its prime back when seatbelts and cupholders were considered extravagances for the upwardly mobile. 

Sam’s early efforts to steer Steve towards something a touch more modern were shut down fairly quickly, and Sam wasn’t inclined to revisit the reasons. 

( _“What if we find him? Where’s he gonna sit?”_

Steve doesn’t even blink. “If we find him, I doubt he’ll want to go anywhere with us.” A line crosses his brow, digs in between his eyes. Steve decides right then and there, “I’ll stay with him.”)

The vehicle at least has a spacious truck bed, and Steve’s motorcycle is strapped in under a tarp. He’s completely convinced that it’s only a chase, now, not a battle. Sam’s heard the spiel: the Winter Soldier won’t engage them directly, not after pulling Steve from the Potomac River, _alive,_ and abandoning his mission. (Sam has his doubts about this, too, but Steve was incessant: “Last time I fell from a plane into a body of water, I sank.”) 

Sam drives and Steve draws in silence. Before, Sam would pepper Steve with questions and commentary, eager to understand why going after the Winter Soldier was so important to Steve. He used to ask about the mission, but that was just a cover. As unreal as Steve’s transformation, death, and resurrection is, the fact that it happened to _another man_ is doubly concerning. Suspended consciousness, prolonged stasis--Sam can hardly fathom Steve’s reality, let alone a decades-old shadow network systematically abusing, manipulating, and molding one man into their own personal assassin. 

Sam stops asking about the mission--and the man--after a while. He simultaneously feels like he knows too much, and that there are some things Steve will never tell him.

Steve doesn’t talk about the war, not right away. He doesn’t talk about the things Sam knows, like suicide missions and losing one of your own. 

He talks about Brooklyn in the summer, as seen only from the tiny window in his family’s one-room apartment. He talks about dusty school yards and sticky-sweet soda fountains. 

Bucky Barnes isn’t a shadow in these stories, he’s the light. He’s the only company Steve has or wants when his health is failing, the strong presence at his side in a brawl not of his making. Bucky is the cool balm on a burning hot day, bearing an icy drink and not willing to admit how many blocks he ran it from the grocery to share it with Steve while it was still cold. (“We went outside to open the bottle in the street,” Steve tells Sam, smiling at the memory. “We learned that lesson only once.”)

When Steve can’t talk about Bucky, when the memory seems to mundane in its telling, he draws. Sam doesn’t know how the sketches come out so perfectly when they’re driving down lost backroads or as passengers on a crumbling railway car, but supposes Steve has had a lot of practice. Some of his old sketches are in the Smithsonian--a fact which thrills Steve more than he’s willing to admit--and they depict life on the road, selling bonds from city to city, state to state. He drew portraits for the chorus girls, heroic G.I.s for their young sons. The latter all shared one face--that of James Buchanan Barnes. 

The drawing he’s working on tonight as they continue along a scenic highway route into central Kentucky is a memory. Steve takes care with the details, pauses and thinks, makes his trousers into short pants because it was summer, peals the wallpaper a little further from the wall, distresses the scrap of curtain obscuring an open window. 

(Sam doesn’t get a look at the drawing until later, when they stop briefly for gas and beef jerky. The picture features two young men, the perspective shared between them. There's a history book resting in the larger boy’s lap. Steve has even drawn a tiny rendering of Napoleon on the open pages. Beyond the book are two pairs of feet. One pair reaches the wall, the other falls short. The wallpaper is flowered, but fading. The window is open to a hot Brooklyn day, waning slowly into night. Sam gets the impression they’ve sat there, pressed together, all day, reading, exploring the world in the only way Steve can. There’s such care taken in the larger set of hands--they’re spread over the book, both of them flesh, gentle. They don’t belong to the Winter Soldier.)

"Any word from Natasha?" Sam asks, and watches as Steve digs in his jacket pockets for the smart phone the agent had palmed into his hand at their last meeting. 

"Uh, no," Steve thumbs at the screen. "Oh, Tony invited us to a party on one of his yachts... off one of his islands. Uh--I guess it was last week." Steve looks apologetic and thinks better of showing Sam the accompanying photographs of bikini-clad models in hydro-powered recreational jet packs. Steve even spies an uncomfortable-looking Bruce Banner in a sun hat and drinking from a coconut. 

Whatever Sam is imagining is just as good, because he looks appropriately dismayed. 

"Sorry," Steve tries, and returns to his sketch. 

Sam is patient to a fault, but it has been months. _Months_ \--he stopped counting exactly how many--since he disappeared from his home, his life, his friendships and responsibilities. The latter two have only become more intertwined since completing his last tour, and now with Steve, they've so merged that Sam can't tell the difference anymore. Sam's doing this--chasing after Steve chasing after a ghost--because he's Steve's friend, or because he feels responsible toward a fellow vet. He isn't sure anymore, but doesn't think it matters anymore, either. 

He won't leave Steve to search for the Winter Soldier on his own. He won't leave Steve with the bloody trail of bodies and body parts and carnage. He won't leave Steve with so much time alone to think that his best friend--for a long time, his _only friend_ \--is so irreversibly damaged. 

These are the facts. They are a kind of mantra for Sam, who uses them to avoid thinking about how ready Steve was to give up _fighting_ Bucky Barnes before he was determined not to stop fighting _for_ him. 

And he thinks about _that_ to avoid thinking how easy it was to drop his life and take up another mission. 

He can’t shake the habit, though, and after a couple tours and a stint as the Falcon, taking up a cause might just come naturally. He incorporates his training all the same--advanced combat, reconnaissance, intelligence gathering. 

Although Steve’s the expert, it’s Sam who has to bring up Hydra. Steve just wants to find his friend, and always seems just one failed attempt away from suggesting they return to Brooklyn and check their old haunts (“The Navy Yard--we saw the keel laying of the USS _North Carolina._ He loved it. Used to say it was the future.”). Even after missing the Winter Soldier at every turn--hell, sometimes they’re left with a still-warm body--Steve never loses hope. It’s not in his nature. But passing another meaningless road sign in the Middle of Nowhere, USA, he’s as down as Sam has ever seen him. And they’re well into Kentucky, now, which doesn’t help matters.

Sam sighs and means to speak, but Steve interrupts him.

“This is nice country,” Steve says, eager for a distraction. He purposefully ignores the fact that it's wet and cold out. “Wish it was light out, maybe we could see some of it.” 

It always comes as a shock that Steve has seen more of America than Sam, but in this instance he doesn’t allow Steve’s nostalgia to distract him. 

“ _Steve,_ ” Sam presses. He's about to get into it again, question their tactics, their mission, to voice his doubt in Steve's assurances that the closer they stay to the Winter Soldier, the likelier he'll be to come around. He gets a fleeting signal on his phone and any sign of civilization is enough to divert his attention. The GPS broadcasts a few approaching motels and diners. Only one institution holds Sam's interest. "A Veterans-only bar," Sam says, showing Steve the screen. "How about it? I'm homesick." 

"You're thirsty," Steve corrects. 

Sam takes the first Lexington exit. “No, you know what I am? I’m tired. I’m _human,_ so I get to be tired.” He frowns, then shakes his head and offers his tacit assurance that he doesn’t intend to berate Steve any further: “Let’s have tonight, and we’ll start again fresh in the morning.” 

Steve nods and closes his sketchbook. 

Sam happily slaps the steering wheel, invigorated with a new resolve. “I want to drink myself silly and pretend I’m on Tony Stark’s yacht.” 

\- 

Tim Gutterson doesn’t like the VFW Club. Intentionally or not, it’s a glum place. It’s all leather and hardwoods, and where the colors were once rich and vibrant, they seem dull and old, bathed in shallow light. Tim’s certain the older clientele find the place solid and comforting, but he thinks the shadows and muted landscape are disorientating. Whether he’s leaving the place with a foreboding hangover or not, he always finds the outside world too-bright and too-sharp. Plus, the club is a little out of his way. Tonight, however, that’s its sole desirable trait. 

Tim’s had a hell of a day, and he wants to wash it down with something stiff. His initial plan of hitting the closest bar to the courthouse is shot to shit when he gets three independent offers of company from Rachel, Nelson, and _Raylan_ , of all people. Tim doesn’t see the need for company, and rebuffs them one by one.

Driving, Tim has time to sort his story out. Guys at the VFW can smell blood on a man as if it was an overpowering cologne. Worse, they like to talk. It’s a tiresome combination.

Tim thinks long and hard and comes up with this: _There was a situation. I handled it._

There’s more, if he chooses to elaborate. _We had to evacuate the building, after, and when we were allowed back in the north stairwell smelled like bleach and air freshener._

The smell seemed to spill into every floor and permeate the building--a detail Tim doesn’t find necessary in its sharing. Likewise, the fact that no one complained, but maybe they should have. 

(By the time he leaves work for a bar--late, on account of paperwork--Tim thinks the scent of blood and gunshot are stronger than when they were fresh, some hours ago.)

So Tim’s plan is simple: go someplace his colleagues aren't likely to follow. If they do, they’ll be stopped at the door. 

It’s the perfect plan. Tim thinks as much until he flashes his military I.D., steps into the bar, and finds the place crowded, for once. Worse still, some musclehead asshole is sat at the far end of the bar, flanked by an empty chair on each side. The only empty chairs in the place. _Asshole._

But Tim's here to drink, so he needs space at the trough. He stops just short of his destination. “Hey, buddy.” Tim speaks without a shred of affection. “Y’mind?”

The musclehead asshole barely lifts his head to acknowledge Tim. He removes his coat from where he has it draped over the barstool, but doesn't shift to the next seat over. Tim slides into place, gets the bartender’s attention and orders bourbon, to start. 

Tim sizes the guy up. Muscular and tall, with a strong bottle of something he’s ignoring in favor of paperwork. The man is sporting a beard and a ratty baseball cap, yet the spread of paperwork looks official in some capacity other than the usual fare in a VFW Club--like an insurance claim. He makes for an odd picture.

Above all, he looks preoccupied, so Tim decides to start up a conversation, to be chatty and drive the man away. 

It’s juvenile, sure, but having been on the other side of such an effort, Tim knows it's foolproof. 

“Haven’t seen you around here,” Tim says, smiling gamely. “You just out? On leave? Usually our numbers don’t increase so much as--” The stranger lifts his head as if this is new information. He looks sorry to hear it, so Tim stops, sensing that the guy is really in the dumps. “I’m never looking for a seat for very long, is what I mean.”

“I’m just passing through,” the stranger says, answering none of Tim's questions. Then, listlessly, like it's a joke he's tired of telling, he continues: “I’m looking for a friend."

Tim raises an eyebrow. “He in that bottle?”

The man smiles--Tim can see the movement under the beard--and slowly shakes his head. “And not in the three before it, no."

Tim thinks he has the guy on the ropes. He has solitude and an extra two barstools in his sights when the guy closes the files he's been reading and looks assuredly at Tim. “Where’d you serve?”

Tim’s mouth goes desert dry. Even with a beard and without the giant “A” on his forehead, Tim recognizes that face. It's from history books and 800-page biographies, the jaw line that launched a thousand comic books, American iconography in the flesh. 

Tim briefly forgets his own name, but he remembers the question. “Afghanistan,” he says, adding lowly, “Captain.”

“Steve,” Captain America corrects while extending his hand.

“Tim,” Tim says, meeting the gesture and then sitting, stunned. “Well. Shit. Lemme buy the next round.” Seeing the Captain's amusedly pleased smile, Tim presses, "Ain't that usually how this goes for you?"

"Well there's usually a self portrait, first." Steve frowns, corrects, "A selfie." 

Tim bites back a giddy smile and swallows a healthy gulp of bourbon. "Y'know, even with photographic evidence, I don't think anybody would believe me." 

Steve is about to speak again when something catches his eye. He looks somewhere over Tim’s head and Tim turns on the barstool, following his gaze. This meeting has activated some long-lost pleasure center in his brain. He feels like a kid again, feels like he’s just been told the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles really do exist, and they want invitations to his sixth birthday party. 

The man Steve’s waving at isn’t another Avenger, let alone an anthropomorphic turtle. He’s just a man, on his cell phone, listening to- and relaying information. 

“Natasha,” he mouths to Steve, and Tim catches it. 

The newcomer hardly spares Tim a passing glance; he knows the look of a starstruck hanger-on when he sees one, even if Steve just thinks everyone’s being polite. 

Tim is suddenly struck by something--the way the man listens so intently to the caller, or his succinct responses to the points made muffled and quiet over a poor connection. It’s another blast of recognition, another face he knows from an entirely different time and place. The man ends the call and Tim does not bother with niceties. 

“Hey,” he starts, uneasy. “You--” Tim is still trying to reconcile the evening’s first meeting with reality, so a second requires a little something extra. “Shit. Bartender, one more.” Tim points to the stranger and says in a voice that seeks immediate affirmation, “You pulled me and my buddy out of a bad spot, once. 2009, Bahram Chah, Helmand province? I hit my target outta your helo, you gave me shit for it?” 

It’s a lot of information, and Sam sort of sags under its unceremonious sharing. 

“Yeah,” Sam eventually confirms, recognition slowly spreading across his face like a warm light. He grins, great and broad, showing off the slight gap in his smile. “You were a little close to Pakistan for my liking.”

“Had my orders,” Tim says, and looks over the pair approvingly. “Looks like your assignment improved.” He asks the bartender to leave the bottle of bourbon, suggesting the three men mean to finish it. Then, feeling more equipped to speak with Captain America’s drinking buddy more so than the Captain himself, Tim asks, “What brings you to Kentucky?”

“Looking for a deranged killer,” Sam hums.

Tim glances speculatively at Captain America. “I thought he was a friend.”

Neither man feels prepared to explain, and Tim understands that. 

He is curious, though. 

“Thinking out loud,” Tim says, pausing for a sip of bourbon, “Can help.” _So can bourbon,_ he thinks, and it must register on his face because Steve smiles and raises a glass. 

“Can’t get drunk,” he says without explanation, which is fine--if not the comic books, Tim has at least read the latest _Vanity Fair_ profile. 

“Damn,” Tim shakes his head in awe. “So you’re like an actual… tragic figure.”

“You have no idea,” Sam chimes in, clearly taking up Tim’s generous offer of the bottle. 

They drink, and Tim doesn’t press for details. He asks Sam about life after pararescue, and the guy is cagey, saying it hasn’t changed all that much. 

“My friend,” the Captain finally says, unprovoked. With a sidelong glance at Sam, he corrects, “My friend, _the deranged killer,_ ” and looks genuinely saddened to do so. He shares a few details, and all the while Tim can tell he’s talking around some greater tragedy. Mentions of murders--B&Es, all of them; followed by dismemberment, most of them; sniper shot, some of them--generously litter the one-sided conversation. Tim isn’t sure he has the capacity to feel shocked, but he makes an effort. 

The Captain finishes lamely, “I need to find him, but the trail’s gone cold.”

It’s more than a little disarming to hear Captain America voice such a sorry appeal. Tim throws back another two fingers of bourbon and makes a move. 

“Well, you’re in luck.” Tim retrieves his wallet to pay for the drinks and makes sure his Deputy's star is visible while doing so. “Finding people is what I do. If your guy blew through here and took out the fellas he did, I might have the resources could point you in his direction.”

Steve immediately brightens, but Sam is hesitant. Tim can read it on his face, but isn’t sure where his concern is directed--at Steve, getting his hopes up, or at Tim, getting involved at all. 

Sam asks lowly, “Are we going to discuss mass murder here at the bar?”

“Wouldn’t be anything this crowd ain’t heard but, yeah,” Tim glances from Steve to Sam. “Would a conference room meet your delicate sensibilities?”

Sam throws back his last drink, grimaces a little less than he had on his first, second helpings. They all three stand, and Sam shoots an accusatory finger at Tim just as Steve claps a heavy, friendly hand on his shoulder. “Don’t make me regret saving your ass.” 

“Aw, you’ll come to that on your own time.”

The three soldiers depart the bar and step into a cold, wet, Kentucky night where a fourth is waiting for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well! That's all I have so far. Yea or Nay?


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks everyone for the kind words of encouragement! Here's part two--hope you crazy kids enjoy it. :P

The old man’s right eye bursts red with blood. A sub-conjunctival haemorrhage isn’t anything the Winter Soldier hasn’t seen before, but it still makes for a fantastic display, and he’d like to see the other one go.

“I don't know! I don't know!”

Blood vessels in the left explode accordingly. 

The Winter Soldier does not appreciate bold-faced liars. Everyone knows something he doesn't. He feels it like a broken bone, just beneath the skin--a certainty he only otherwise experiences with a mission in his sights. 

“You're not listening to me,” he grinds out. The man beneath him is terrified, but it’s not the blind terror of an unfortunate bystander. It’s fear twisted with desperation, because this is a man who knows something he shouldn’t, and yet he continues to wail and shriek and proclaim his ignorance. 

The Winter Soldier is growing tired of this, of finding those faces who have seen him before, who know his good work, and have even benefited from it. They give him nothing, or else feed him lies. Some even tell him to return, to wait, because cut off one head, two more--

The Winter Soldier doesn’t need to hear the company line.

His fingers are splayed. Angry, he can feel the indentations he's putting into the man's skull with one hand. The man screams out in pain and in a moment of weakness, the Winter Soldier takes an ear. Where the flesh isn’t torn, it’s soft. 

He crushes the man’s head to stop his wailing. Brain matter spits through the man’s nose and his blood-shot eyes pop from their sockets. Still red-faced from screaming, the man will eventually cool and stiffen, although the Winter Soldier only knows this theoretically; he’s never been precious with a mission.

He steps out of the cabin and onto the soft, wet earth. There are broken trees to his right--some poorly hacked apart for firewood. Some dim memory drifts like fog in his mind. There are broken trees along a road, and men. Hungry, broken men. They’re marching, but more than that--they’re following one man, one leader. The Winter Soldier can’t picture them at all, and for that fact alone, figures himself somewhere in front. But he’s no leader of men. 

He’s not fit for such a task. 

It’s as his Masters explained: he is a hammer, and every problem a nail. No one respects a tool, only the hand that wields it. The Winter Soldier flexes his foreign appendage. He doesn’t even have _that._

It’s dark when he leaves the cabin, but the moon is fat and full and its light engulfs the landscape like the blast of an atomic bomb. The Winter Soldier knows that effect firsthand, and half-expects to see burned shadows on the earth--including his own. He looks at the gray ground and doesn’t see his own shadow, and figures it’s back where he left it.

He wonders if that’s all he is: a scar on the earth, a deceptively empty trench turned upright and made three-dimensional--everything short of sentient. He wonders, then, where such thoughts come from. Trenches--they weren’t his war. They were quite possibly related to one of the few conflicts that couldn’t, by some measure, be considered “his war.” 

He feels like he read about them in a book, but that comes from an uncertain place, too. The mental fog swallows up any fully formed memory, except this: he closes his eyes and sees deep trenches pictured across smooth pages. Fingers tracing the grishley ravines cut into the earth by man and ideology and necessity. The pictures are clear, but the words… 

Maybe someone read to him.

He’s unconsciously worked the ear between his fingers. It’s shredded now and has lost its shape. The Winter Soldier drops it to the ground, a gift for some hungry animal.

\- 

Sam talks Tim’s ear off the second the three congress at the Lexington courthouse. It’s as if he’s drunk on any topic of conversation beyond the one that’s consumed his entire life for the better part of six months. He wants to know how a sniper in the Rangers came to reside in Kentucky when last Sam heard of him--laughing, his buddy’s arm over his shoulders, their legs kicked out of a rescue chopper soaring over mountainous Afghanistan--Tim had been on the path to career military. 

“Plans change,” is Tim’s sole, succinct answer. 

They hit the stairwell and Steve interrupts, “What’s that smell?”

They all smell it. They all know he doesn’t need to ask. 

Tim plays up the discomfort. “Wha--the delightfully acrid combination of bleach, blood, and the headshot I took in here this morning?” 

Steve takes a second, studious whiff. “Yeah, that must be it.”

So, Captain America has a sense of humor.

Under normal circumstances, Tim wouldn’t explain himself any further, as doing so tends to bring the distinct aroma of guilt to the act. But now he has no less a man than _Captain America_ following him to his workplace, trusting that Tim can somehow be of help in the search for a friend-turned-assassin. Tim very nearly misses a step, feeling like he’s suddenly on _literal_ uncertain ground. 

“A fella took a judge hostage,” Tim says. “Already stabbed him once in the gut, had the knife at his throat… About eight of us had our pieces pulled, but I had the shot.”

Steve stops dead in his tracks. “You ID him?”

Tim’s mouth falls open in breathless dread before he closes it, wets his lips, and explains: “Local guy, Theodore Ramsey. He’s got--priors. He’s got priors.” It’s the only way Tim can think to assuage the Captain’s fears that maybe this was a case of deadly, mistaken identity. 

When they enter the Marshal’s offices, Tim is quick to outfit the conference room with laptops, pulling up and logging into the appropriate programs to search local and state incident reports. 

“Breaking and entering,” Sam announces, finding in a Lexington police report a flicker of something familiar from their travels. “Nothing taken, just…” Sam rubs his forehead, suddenly tired. “The door was ripped off its hinges. How many times have we seen that before?”

“That’s a nifty MO if I ever saw one,” Tim chimes in. 

Steve is interested and motions for Sam to continue. “Who filed the report?”

“Andrea Arnett, wife of… Wesley Arnett,” Sam reads, and rambles out an address. “Officer made a note that the husband didn’t want to file a complaint.”

“On a door being ripped off his house?” Steve questions flatly. 

“His _front_ door,” Sam confirms. 

“Wesley Arnett, huh?” Steve’s attention turns to Tim, who certainly wasn’t expecting his part to extend any further than logging into various state and city databases, maybe going on a coffee run. 

Tim blinks twice, uncertain, then starts in on his own search. “Name sounds familiar,” he mumbles, and after a few clicks Tim has his answer. “His older brother was Emmitt Arnett, a Dixie Mafia shot caller who got plugged a while back. Looks like young Wesley has moved up in the world.”

“Check the list,” Sam tells Steve. “Is he Hydra?” 

Steve’s already on it. He’s scrolling through an ever-growing list of names that passes between himself and Natasha several times a week. “Emmitt’s listed,” he says, “But not Wesley.” 

“Could be he’s new, not up in ranks.”

Steve’s eyes remain steadfast as he searches the list again. “Or it’s Emmitt he wants. Could be Wesley’s completely innocent.”

“Well,” Tim hedges, “That’s doubtful. You miss that part where I said _mafia?_ ” 

Sam starts, “A mafia is--”

“ _I know what a mafia is,_ ” Steve says, bristling. 

Just as Sam is about to deliver what Tim expects to be a much-practiced apology, he hears the elevator startle open, and sharp clicks of a pair of heels on the floor, and suddenly Steve, Sam, and Tim no longer have the place to themselves. Worse, Tim has no real explanation for their being in the office after-hours. He steels himself in his swivel chair, turning to meet his fate head-on. 

Rachel Brooks opens the conference room door and sticks her head in. "Tim, what are you--" she halts, seeing those gathered, "You have company. Who--" she really _sees_ them, then, and breathes a stricken, "Oh, _wow._ " 

Her mouth is hanging slightly open, which is as adorable as it is unbecoming, so Tim doesn’t let the moment drag. "Would you believe the VFW kicked us out for lewd behavior?"

"Maybe you," she fires back, tightening her jaw. Then, with a deliberate frown, she presses her colleague: “Is that where you disappeared to after this morning?”

Tim really wishes he hadn’t made that connection for her. She’ll start to think things, feel things. Horrible things, like concern for Tim’s well-being. 

“Really?” Tim drawls, gesturing to those assembled ( _assembled!_ he thinks giddily), and the gruesome matter spread between them. “ _That’s_ what you take away from this?” 

Rachel wets her lips, then steps fully into the room and closes the door behind her. 

Sam and Steve rise from their seats, because _of course._

Tim makes the appropriate introductions--"Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers, this is Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Rachel Brooks”--and they trade handshakes, with Steve adding a charming smile and a deferential “ma’am” to his. _Of course._

“What are we working on, here?” she asks airily, determined not to betray her unease. 

“Recipe book,” Tim says, nodding towards the array of crime scene photos on the table. “One dismembered arm, four severed fingers, add three slugs to the chest to season… and you’ve got a lovely murder bouquet.”

Rachel smooths her hands down her blazer. It’s new, nicer than her other wears, but doesn’t quite match her trousers. She’s got the Chief Deputy title on lockdown, but there’s resistance in other ways. 

“Does anyone want to give a better explanation?” she asks coolly. “Something for the record books that doesn’t make my superiors think I’ve lost my damn mind?”

Tim chews his lip, looks up at Rachel with a sorry expression. Maybe it’s not so bad that she thinks he’s feeling lousy for shooting some maniac in the stairwell. Maybe she’ll take pity and allow him this one, singularly fantastic moment to be of service to the man who _embodies_ service and duty and all the other bullshit that got Tim swept up into the military in the first place. “This is sort of… off the record.” 

“Chief,” Steve says, standing again, “I apologize. Your Deputy generously offered to share some information, help us get the lay of the land here. We’re looking for someone. That’s about as much as I can say.” 

Rachel notices the multiple screens upon which Tim has logged into various government databases. Granting civilians access to such venues is against more regulations than Rachel can count, and she says as much.

“You can’t really call Captain America a civilian, though,” Tim rebuffs, then points at Sam. “And he’s ex-military.” 

Rachel serves Tim a flat look. “You wanna be _ex-Marshal?_ Keep sassing me.”

It’s a harsher sentiment than she intends. She chalks it up to the fact that this get-up is sending her reeling. Tim is flagrantly challenging federal policy, but only as a favor to Captain America. It’s so far removed from the realm of possibility that Rachel can hardly bring herself to respond.

Tim’s giving her a hopeful look as he awaits her ruling. The minute she brings her hand to rest on her brow, Tim knows he’s won. He smiles, satisfied. She sighs, haggard.

“I wasn’t here,” she says. “I don’t know a word about this.” Her attention flits between Tim, Sam Wilson, and _Captain America._ “Good luck.”

“Hey,” Tim grins, “You want a selfie before you go?”

She’s going to get him back for that one--Tim knows this in his bones--but it’s worth it. Rachel purses her lips. “It’s probably best not to amass evidence of the thing I said never happened.” 

With a final nod, she leaves the room for the elevators. 

"She’s cute,” Sam says, clearly conferring with Tim. His tone suggests an unspoken follow-up: _Is she single?_ which Tim ignores, because if Rachel’s interested, she’ll make a move. She needs no go-between. 

"She knows it,” Tim shoots back lazily, “And she’s out of your league." 

Steve laughs faintly at that, but his attention has already returned to the search. Steve explains they’ve only followed the Winter Soldier’s handiwork, and have only now been fortunate enough to stumble upon his movements: just a single, lucky shot from a live-streaming wildlife camera. The screenshot of a man with what looked like a metal arm was mostly panned on Reddit, uninteresting to those who didn’t know what they were looking at: a genetically modified, Nazi experiment forged in the body of a young man. Steve doesn’t say exactly this, because that’s a version of his friend he still blames himself for creating. Steve just mumbles, _A 97-year-old assassin._

Tim doesn’t understand even _that_ , but doesn’t hear room for a Q&A segment, either, so he says nothing. He searches as best he can with the limited information Steve and Sam are willing to impart upon him, makes coffee, and freely shares his federal database login passwords. (Steve raises an eyebrow at _fuckmeimbored_ and Tim dryly explains that Captain America doesn’t visit his office every day, _so imagine what the other 364 are like._ )

Three hours in, Sam's yawning. After another thirty minutes, he can hardly keep his eyes open. Tim is similarly afflicted, but wants to keep up with Steve. He throws back another cooling cup of office coffee and digs deeper into the sketchy pasts of Kentucky’s most prominent crime families.

Both he and Sam are nearing their breaking points--although neither is willing to break first--when Steve closes the laptop he’s using and calls it a night. Both mere humans try not to look overly relieved. 

Sam runs a hand over his head--from his forehead to the base of his skull, like he’s missing a helmet. “There any good motels around here?”

Partially mirroring the gesture, Tim scrubs the side of his face. He feels tiredness like a physical amenity and wants to rub it out. “What’s your opinion on bedbugs?”

“How about your place?” Steve asks.

Tim balks for a moment, suddenly ashamed that he didn’t offer, but simultaneously thinking of all the reasons he didn’t and _shouldn’t._ “Sure,” he stammers. “My place is… bedbug free.”

“I just,” Steve flushes. It’s a bright, brilliant color that erupts from beneath the collar of his shirt and god only knows the original source. “I thought we could get right to work as soon as possible. An early start, you know?”

Tim nods. It’s not as if he’s going to say no to Captain America, but--

Tim proceeds cautiously, hearing for himself how pathetic he sounds: “I just got the one bed, and a couch. You guys are welcome to both.” 

Steve smiles and goes to collect his print-outs from the large machine in the bullpen. He leaves Tim with Sam, who shrugs tiredly. 

“I know,” Sam says, standing up and looking as though the air three feet above the conference room table is suddenly too thin. “It’s weird. But he’s just so gosh-darn earnest.” 

Sam and Steve follow Tim to his apartment building with only the promise of floorspace and breakfast at their backs. The set-up is decidedly less weird by the time they reach Tim’s door. Sam Wilson once saved his life, and Steve Rogers saved the world. They've both earned squatters rights as far as Tim is concerned. 

Sam barrels into the living room couch. He kicks off his shoes and yanks a plaid blanket over his person. 

Steve stands at Tim’s kitchen counter, spreading out the police reports. He’s shed his jacket, left it folded neatly over one of the mismatched, garage sale chairs at Tim’s kitchen table. Tim stands awkwardly off to the side. He’s about to offer Steve the bed--Tim sleeps on the bedroom floor in his sleeping bag, more nights than not, but that’s on a need-to-know basis. As in, nobody needs to know.)--when Steve turns and unintentionally corners him between the table and the door. 

Only, Tim slowly realizes, it’s completely intentional. 

“Deputy Gutterson,” Steve says, looking ashamed and like he means to add a pejorative “Son” to the phrase, “I thank you for all your help, and I do believe you give it freely, but,” he stops, sighs. “Hydra… is insidious.” 

He confiscates Tim’s phone and computer. It’s a bizarre exchange but Tim complies without hesitation. 

As if he means to soften the blow, Steve tells him quietly, “You'll understand, we’ve been burned before.” 

It’s another one of the things Tim most assuredly _doesn’t_ understand, but he can relate to the need for safety, however one can get it. That’s why he scratches the back of his head, then forces himself to grind out the words: “I have weapons, too. My sidearm, another handgun, and a rifle.”

Steve nods. “How well do you sleep without them by your side?”

Across from any other living being, Tim would feel deeply ashamed that his neurosis is apparently on such open display, but there’s something about the direct nature of Steve’s sincerity that makes Tim believe he isn’t judging so much as… understanding.

Tim lies, anyway. “Alright.”

They make another exchange: Tim’s goodnight’s sleep for Steve’s assurance he isn’t Hydra infantry. Tim can feel another set of eyes on him--Sam’s, because, like Steve, he can’t trade in exhaustion without security. 

Parting from his weapons leaves Tim on edge. He can scarcely imagine sleep, so he tries to ride this newfound trust for what it’s worth. He chances thumbing through some of Steve’s files. “How long you been on his trail?” 

“You remember the mid-air collision in D.C.?”

It was _months ago._ "Helicopter prototypes," Tim recalls the phrase trotted out by officials--a fairly blatant coverup. 

Steve smiles sadly, and his eyes roam the files. "It was a little more than that." 

Steve wets his lips, continues with a faraway stare like he’s just imagining his response, and not in fact sharing it aloud. "He went abroad, first. Europe. There didn't seem to be any pattern to it. He was erratic, hopping country to country, killing dignitaries, financial ministers, a prince, others. We started getting word of these attacks stateside. Our-- _Natasha_ is working to decrypt Hydra tech, get a list of names started. So far, every unsolved murder on our list? Shares a name on hers." 

"He's going after Hydra leadership," Sam surmises from the couch.

Tim nods solemnly, sets his gaze on Steve. "Ain't that what you were doing, back in the day?" Even if the public library in his podunk hometown hadn’t stocked the old footage, Tim would know from the recent explosion of pbs documentaries that even when Captain America punched a Nazi in the face, he didn’t stay down without a few bullets in him, first.

Steve grits his teeth. "That was war.”

"Infiltration, soldiers for the cause, casualties," Tim shuffles through both Steve's collection of data and his own. "Smells like war to me." 

"No," Steve is adamant. "It doesn't have to be." 

Tim reminds himself that Steve isn’t lying--least of all, to himself. He isn’t carrying a weapon, only a shield (and it’s set on top of Tim’s fridge like an oversized magnet, _how fuckin’ cool is that._ ). And he’s searching for a man, not another kill. 

As assuredly as Tim’s cache of weaponry is tidily hid under the couch, Tim maybe understands Captain America a little, too. 

Tim rubs his brow. “What’s he look like?” he asks, then adds dryly, “In case I see him at a Denny’s.”

Steve isn’t going to show Tim the photograph he has. It’s not exactly recent, for once, but mostly Steve feels he shouldn’t spread the good word if the prodigal son hasn’t yet returned. He goes to the couch and unzips his backpack, then retrieves a sketchbook. Tim glances at Sam, uncertain.

“Be polite,” Sam instructs seriously, but the corners of his mouth are twitching into a smile. Tim is quietly pleased that Sam is as good a guy as he was in ‘09, saving Tim from certain death. 

Steve returns to the kitchen counter and settles in. He’s practically hugging the pad of paper to his chest, and Sam has to look away because his grin is so wide it’s damn near indecent. 

"All security footage was destroyed." Steve says it like a disclaimer. 

Tim is shown a page of sketches. It’s not at all what he expected. 

Tim’s reminded of a museum collection he saw once--works by men commissioned as war artists during World Wars I and II. They were predominantly landscapes, none bearing the gaunt faces of the dead.

Those pieces are wholly unlike Steve’s, but Tim sees an unrelenting familiarity. The lines--delicately rendered in the face, but hard and harsh throughout the torso and body, as if to convey exactly the kind of destruction the mysterious form imparts on his victims. 

There are many sketches, Tim comes to find as he flips through the pages. There’s one where the assassin is wielding a giant machine gun with his metal arm--why Steve and Sam were beating around _that_ particular steely bush, Tim cannot fathom. His hair is whipping across his face, obscuring the features not already obliterated by a mesh face mask--a kind of muzzle, Tim thinks, scrutinizing its restrictive design. The weapon is drawn so that the rifle is pointed at the viewer. Tim hazards to think that the weapon is facing the viewer, himself. Intent eyes pierce through the page. 

“Aw, that’s nice,” Tim says airily. “He pose for that one?”

There’s another, less daunting sketch and the images could not differ any further. The face is open, smiling, cocksure. The look about him is entirely charming--even his hat is positioned jauntily, as if it is smiling, too. “He’s a very cheerful assassin,” Tim observes with a smile of his own--one that is quickly smothered when Steve grabs the sketchbook and closes it tight.

He hugs the thing to his chest, again, and say just as tightly: “That was from before.”

Tim lowers his head, ashamed. Steve makes no effort to tell him such feeling is unfounded; no, in Steve’s eyes Tim has done a great cruelty. 

“Sorry,” Tim tries, then looks to Sam for help. “Just the two of you, then, following leads you pick up out of newspapers and police scanners?”

“We’ve got a few friends working their sources,” Sam confirms. 

He says it with a confidence Tim doesn’t question. 

“Local law enforcement ain’t as up with the times, though,” Tim hazards a guess. He watches Steve return to the couch, sketchbook under one arm. “No one’s tweeting that guys from D.C. to Lexington are getting their arms ripped off. Nothing digital for your… friends to get wind of.”

Steve studies Tim a moment, then speaks coolly: “That’s very observant.” He pulls the bag of Tim’s weapons partially out from under the couch. “You understand why I took these from you, then?”

A taunt for a taunt.

Tim nods, accepting his punishment. “I was a sniper in the Rangers.” It’s both a clarification for the deadly collection, and a point to which Tim hopes he can hurl himself back into Steve’s good graces. “You always want good intel, but when your life and the lives of your buddies are on the line, there’s nothing quite like following a trail, yourself.”

Steve looks a little pained--as if _he’s_ the one being found out. He ducks his head to hide his mouth as it falls into a thin line, his chin as it wrinkles like a walnut. He holds so this tension in the lower half of his face, Tim dreads to think what gutted visions his blue eyes might make. 

“I don’t want to hurt him,” Steve says. It’s a firm declaration, though something lingers after it, some space where Steve might have admitted a new truth. Instead, he persists: “I have to help him. I owe him that much.”

Tim nods, and from somewhere on the couch, Sam nods, too. Despite their valiant efforts, they’re both still outsiders to Steve’s mission, and have to fill in some blanks themselves. 

Steve extends his own unspoken apology: “He was our sniper.” 

Which makes Steve’s mission that much more dangerous, Tim determines. But he doesn’t need to be wooed; he’s already in this. 

“When’d you last see him?” Tim asks, then frowns playfully, “Humor me, I do this for a living.” 

Steve doesn’t know how to answer: _DC, a couple months ago? Or hanging off a train, plummeting into some mountain crevice-- _decades ago_? Could be… when he shipped out._

Steve settles on, “D.C.”

“Bringing down that,” Tim gestures loosely with one hand, not pleased with the only term he has for this occasion, “ _helicopter_ incident? The one that killed all them people?”

“He doesn’t have a choice,” Steve presses. “They… brainwashed him, conditioned him to behave this way.” 

“I get that,” Tim is quiet, trying to be gentle with Captain America. “In a warzone. Not in Middle America.”

Steve just shakes his head. “There’s no difference anymore.”

They’re both speaking quietly now, and Tim realizes it’s because Sam has closed his eyes and fallen asleep. 

Tim asks for more information on Hydra. It's all very cloak and dagger, and certainly something Tim plans to google when his confiscated laptop is returned. Steve tells him a bizarre history of scientific and ideological thought running parallel to Nazism, then bursting forwards, out, and into all facets of life. It _dwarfs_ Nazism. It’s like a sleeper cell, Steve explains, and even those closest to you can be herded into the fray.

Tim listens and then, nodding towards Sam, asks: "How can you be sure?"

"I just know," Steve answers at once. He’s confident and sure, but nonetheless darkly jokes, "That, and the Winter Soldier hasn't killed him yet." 

It’s a satisfying enough answer for Tim, whose body begs for sleep and soon has him disappearing into his bedroom and closing the door. When the apartment seems to breathe a sigh of relief now that its occupants have settled, Sam turns over on the couch and glares at Steve. "Glad my credentials checked out."

"You know how it is with civilians," Steve murmurs. They don't always need the truth--just a story will do.

Sam frowns. "He's not one, though." He shakes his head, not caring to press the matter. "Where you gonna sleep? And don't give me that, _I've slept for seventy years_ nonsense. You've been on the road for sixteen hours, too.”

Steve holds up his hands, defeated. He collects a blanket and pillow from the linen closet, and sets up on the floor. He stalls before resting his head.

“I’m sorry. That was insensitive.” Steve finally settles in. The dark and the quiet are comforting, but Steve’s restless mind continues to plague him. “The people he’s--” Steve can’t bring himself to say it. Still, Natasha’s confirmed every one of them: Hydra. “The… the soccer coach. The priest. The mother of three. That mayor.” 

Steve wants too many things at once: He wants these people to either be bold-faced villains or misguided souls. He wants to cast the Winter Soldier as an innocent, yet the man he knows is a soldier.

“They were Hydra,” Sam corrects, because he’s thought circles around this, too. The last time he tasted such bitterness on his own tongue was in imparting the sentiment on another, striking their humanity from his mind. Hydra, insurgents, _the enemy._ It’s all the same.

“I’m tired,” Sam says, although the source is unclear. 

\- 

In the early morning hours the Winter Soldier watches three soldiers stir from their sleep. It’s a cold morning, where certain rain may visit as potential snow. He draws the stolen hooded wears closer around his person and does not fault himself for kneading his one freezing, fleshy hand into the deep pockets. He hasn't yet confirmed his target. 

Activity in the parking lot interrupts his plans, however, and makes him take up a hidden knife. He slows his breathing and watches the black vehicle ease to a stop. The Winter Soldier is slumped against a brick wall, ass planted in frozen ground and bulk obscured by wiry shrubs. He's completely unseen to the strangely outfitted individual in the car. He hazards a guess--another Avenger?--before dismissing the thought outright. 

This is only a man, although he moves with a confidence more akin to Gods wielding mythical hammers. The Winter Soldier then spies the man’s sidearm and regards it as a lowly substitute. He's prepared to dismiss the interruption as no meaningful threat, until the man--arms laden with plastic bags, handgun in its hip holster--takes the stairs toward the apartment he's been watching since midnight. 

The Winter Soldier trades his knife for an easily assembled rifle, chooses a new position, and waits.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Steve accept some help on their search for the Winter Soldier as he makes Kentucky his latest target.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys are great! Thanks so much for reading and commenting. :D!
> 
> When I plotted this story out two weeks ago, I had roughly 19 points I needed to get in (literally, "Sam and Steve drive." "Meet Tim at the bar"). That has clearly expanded some through the writing process, because I thought I'd hit a hefty sum of points by this chapter's end. Um, nope! Finished point 7 out of 19. We've got a little ways to go, kids, but I'll try to be quicker about it! (That said, some of my points are basically, "Steve has sadness.") ;)

Tim answers the door not with a cup of coffee in hand, but with a hand on his sidearm. Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens pretends not to notice.

“Rachel sent me,” Raylan announces tiredly, elbowing past Tim in the doorway. He’s dressed casually, a green tee with buttons open at the throat, a checkered shirt with a wrinkled collar, and a plaid winter coat. His jeans, boots, cowboy hat, Deputy’s badge and gun, which never seem to change with the weather, are also a fixture. “You wanna tell me what I’m doing up at the asscrack of dawn? She just said to show up, and,” he raises the plastic bags in each hand, then drops them unceremoniously on the kitchen counter, “that I needed enough to feed a platoon.”

Tim throws up his hands, exasperated, and lets Raylan see for himself that he has company. The two other men in the room are both drinking coffee from mugs (one reads _Army Rangers_ and the other, _Newport Oktoberfest 2012_ ) and surveying this cowboy lawman who at once seems to be known to their new Deputy ally, but also detested. 

“Huh,” Raylan observes, then plucks the hat from his head as if it’s obstructing his view. “Didn’t think she meant that literally.” 

“Platoon has more guys,” Tim mumbles. 

“We could pass for a fireteam,” Steve offers amiably. He’s looking sidelong at Raylan almost--amusedly. Giddy, like Raylan is a character from an old Western come to life, a long way away from his natural haunts, the _Sagebrush Trail_ and the like. Sam sees it, too, and throws Tim a knowing look. It’s as if Steve is touched by Raylan’s display. _People still dress like this!_ Sam imagines Steve thinking, excitedly. 

“Steve Rogers,” Steve introduces himself.

They shake hands, but Raylan squints at him all the same. “Yeah, you certainly got that going for you.” 

It’s a bizarre compliment, and Steve sort of half-grins. 

“Raylan Givens,” Raylan says. It’s almost an afterthought. “I work with Tim.” That, even more so. 

Then, with a wry smile, he sets a hand on one of the bags he brought in. “And I come bearing gifts.”

\- 

Tim is glad for a meal that isn’t a questionable number of days old, but he’s not above feeling affronted that Raylan isn’t getting the third degree over a spread of scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, bagels, and french toast. They’re crowded around Tim’s small counter, eating while standing like a herd of stock horses. Tim chews noisily on the sugary glob of eggy toast in his mouth, then asks indignantly, “What, no interrogation tactics for him?”

Sam seems inclined to agree, but Steve just smiles. “It’s the hat,” he says. “Too conspicuous to be Hydra.”

Raylan takes offense. “Oh, we’re talking conspicuous, Captain Stars-And-Stripes?”

“Don’t forget the spangles,” Sam chimes in.

“There were never spangles,” Steve huffs.

When breakfast leaves the frenzied stage and becomes just a couple of men fueling themselves with good coffee, Sam pulls Tim aside. It’s easy enough to do while Raylan monopolizes Steve’s attention, teasing him about his signature look, and Steve serving up as good as he gets. 

Sam doesn’t want to admit it, but he’s had enough of the tiny apartment. It’s clean enough for a single man in his late twenties, early thirties, but more than that it’s… sterile. Every surface is clear, clean--only, Sam suspects, the drawers and storage spaces are a mess. Sam likes a place where people have to dust the family off the kitchen table, where company or a lover builds up a presence. Tim’s apartment has none of that. 

Sam and Tim relocate to the tiny concrete balcony Tim keeps a potted plant on. The plant--whatever it was--has long since died, so what’s left is essentially a giant ceramic ashtray. It’s cold out, but the sun is shining and the effect is not unlike a jolt of caffeine for the senses. 

“Lemme be blunt,” Sam starts. “Your couch? Smells like you soaked it in vodka but forgot to set it on fire.”

“Shit,” Tim jokes, “I knew there was a step two.” 

“You got some problems,” Sam says with a smile, but somewhere lurking behind the kind eyes and curved lips, there’s a concern that makes Tim feel uneasy. He feels it like a spotlight, despite accepting only a supporting role. “In my other life, maybe you’d feel comfortable talking about it.”

Tim doesn’t even bat an eye. “I soak my couch in vodka to mask the farts. Oh, god. My darkest, innermost secret is out.”

Sam rolls his eyes, shakes his head. Tim’s brand of deflection is nothing he hasn’t seen before. Sam asks, “Can we trust him?” 

He means Raylan, and Tim was waiting for this.

“He ain’t a soldier,” Tim says, because even though it’s obvious, he feels it needs saying. “But he ain’t afraid of a little gunplay, neither, and he’ll have your back. Don’t expect you to take my word for it, but I trust him.”

“Then I trust him,” Sam affirms. 

Tim’s gaze flicks upwards, catching Sam’s gaze. He smirks, looks away. “We don’t got to do the… I’m a soldier, you’re a soldier thing. If I laid it on a little thick at the bar, it was just ‘cause I was surprised to see you again.”

“Oh, please,” Sam claws his hand, gesturing like he’s a theater student wielding a skull and bursting to present his first-ever Shakespearean monologue. “For once, I felt like someone might ask for _my_ autograph.”

There’s a definite lag in the conversation until Tim asks with a dryness that could engulf all of California in flames, “Can I have your autograph?”

Sam laughs--loud, vibrant, and genuine. The air around him even seems to change, adopting the sweetness of springtime as he exhales. It even startles Tim a little, who then frowns into his coffee mug, ducking his head like he thinks he’ll get some joy lodged in his eye. 

“People don’t remember me so often,” Sam admits. 

Tim can’t fathom that. He remembers Sam so clearly--even under the heavy camo gear, wraparound sunglasses, and helmet. He had a wide smile, like he understood better than Tim had what a good thing he’d done. Tim can’t allow himself to go that route, so he gets salty and sardonic. “Like, statistically, you rescue more corpses than not, or…?”

Sam just smiles again. “Usually you boys are occupied checking your buddies, yourselves for bullet holes. I don’t take it personally.” 

“Well,” Tim huffs, “Maybe you should.”

Sam hears what he’s not saying and replies, “You’re welcome.” 

The balcony is surrounded by rusty metal railing. A pigeon lands and instead of shooing it away, Sam picks at the bagel in his hand and feeds the thing. It eats right out of his hand. 

Tim is a little more than bewildered. 

“I like birds,” Sam shrugs. The creature cooes like he appreciates the sentiment. 

Tim rubs the back of his neck, upsetting the little bit of product he uses to keep his hair swept back now that it’s gotten so long. After a decade of buzzcuts, anything else feels like growing a lion’s mane, but Tim likes the change. 

At the very least, it allows him a range of gestures so as to telegraph his uncertainty. “Captain… Steve… I saw his sketches. His other sketches.” Among the detailed work capturing the likeness of their ghostly assassin, there had been the odd sketch of Sam. Just Sam, driving, or Sam, eating a greasy diner burger, or Sam, flying a set of mechanized battle wings. “You ain’t exactly piloting the same helos as before.” 

Sam just smiles, feeds the bird. 

“I’m not here in that capacity,” he says at last, but Tim isn’t hearing it. It’s dawning on him that he has _two_ superheroes for houseguests. 

“Birds, huh.” Tim tries to feed it, too, but ends up throwing crumbs at the thing and it takes off. 

Sam laughs. “Yeah, birds. It just turned out that way.” 

Inside, Raylan is putting the moves on Steve like he was a cute blonde at a bar. Given Tim's healthy stash of alcohol in the cabinets just to their right, that's not far from the truth. 

“Thought I’d take a look at the names you got,” Raylan is saying as Tim and Sam reenter the kitchen.

Steve is uncertain about sharing such intelligence--even Tim hasn’t seen this supposed master list--but masks it well. “You two can take off work?”

“Teacher gave us a note,” Raylan drawls. He isn’t fooled by the question and succinctly makes their case: “I know the players here and Tim’s an alright shot.”

“We’re not going to hurt him,” Tim blurts out, then glances at Steve for confirmation.

Raylan looks confused. “Then what _are_ we doing?”

Tim sighs, further musses his own hair. He looks from Sam to Steve. "You'd better tell him, else he just starts shooting indiscriminately."

\- 

Wesley Arnett doesn't strike the same figure his older brother did. Raylan informs the group of this even before Wesley has turned away to assure his wife their early-morning callers are police officers ("We ain't," Tim corrects listlessly), and it's nothing to worry about ("Optimistic, isn't he?" Raylan says). Wesley has thinning hair, shallow cheeks scarred with the ancient remnants of highschool acne, and is just this side of skinny _beanpole_ rather than skinny _trendy._ Emmitt was of a sturdier build, short but imposing.

"'Course," Raylan continues, still well in earshot of the younger Arnett, "Emmitt's dead, so I guess Wes wins this one by default."

"It's Wesley," Wesley corrects, his tone snippy and short. He doesn't address the derogatory mention of his deceased brother. He comes to stand before them in the parlor of his extravagant home, silky dressing robe twisted around his narrow frame.

Raylan gives him a mocking thumbs-up. "You got it, Wes."

Behind Raylan and Tim, who are displaying their badges prominently on their hips, Steve and Sam hang back, alternatively looking around and checking their cell phones for messages. 

Tim takes the lead, figuring Steve and Sam rarely get so far as questioning -- _live_ \--witnesses. "Mr. Arnett, we need to ask you about your encounter a few nights back." When Wesley doesn't answer immediately in hushed tones or break down into tears, Tim presses, "The break in? Dude with a metal arm and a strong stance against doorbells?" 

Wesley balks. He certainly hadn't betrayed that detail to the investigating police. He stares wide-eyed at the Marshals, doubtful he has found two Hydra allies, but intrigued all the same. 

"I don't--I _handled that._ " His voice drops to a whisper even though his wife has already disappeared back upstairs, her short, shimmery nightgown fluttering at her hips as she went.

Raylan looks him up and down. "You seem pretty confident for a fella who's looking at some hefty contractor fees."

"It's just a door." Wesley tries to remain blasé. He only accomplishes looking constipated.

With a soft snort, Raylan concedes the point. "You got a firearm in the house, Wesley?"

After some incessant arguing--mutterings of his right to privacy, right to bear arms, _right to be a weaselly little shit_ \--Wesley eventually produces a firearm. Raylan takes the thing and inspects it. It's an old six-shot Marlin, beautifully restored. It has silver etchings along its side--a stag and crossed muskets. Raylan doesn’t know what he expects to see--maybe the Hydra insignia he only remembers vaguely from history books, usually only mentioned as a brief offshoot to the cause. 

He returns its attention to the rifle, not its adornments. It’s a powerful piece of weaponry, but not one that requires a lot of skill. It might as well belong to the legally blind.

Raylan takes aim and blasts a hole through Wesley's porch.

Sam and Steve jump, surprised, but Tim is used to Raylan’s cowboy antics. 

"A door and your porch,” Raylan says. “That'll add up." 

Wesley is pale-faced and balking at the ludaric display. He sputters, "I just--he wanted information! I gave him a name!”

"What name?"

"Gerald Johns!”

Raylan turns his head just a hair, his version of speaking directly to someone who isn't in his eyeline. "Wealthy fella, old money. Runs with a crowd, the Clover Hillers." Raylan looks down his nose at Wesley. “Above your pay grade, I would have thought.”

“The money’s outside civil service, Raylan.” Wesley’s got some of his bite back, but it’s short-lived.

“What? Now you tell me.” Raylan readies the weapon again, this time at a polished wood bannister. “Hope there’s lots of it.”

"I gave him his place in Harlan!” Wesley cries out, desperate to prevent further damage to his property. “Gerald rarely ever goes, except in the winter, to hunt."

"It's November. And unseasonably cold." 

Wesley shrugs pitifully.

With a name and the knowledge that a trained assassin got it some nights previous, Tim is ready to leave. He imagines Sam and Steve share his urgency, but Raylan is slow to depart, not yet ready to go gallivanting off to their latest lead. 

He speaks with an intentional slowness, like he’s having trouble stringing the facts together. "Some maniac rips a hole through your house and comes in, terrifies your wife, and you give him this name. This _one name._ "

"He's, you know," Wesley trails off. Raylan wishes he’d continue. He wants to know if this blast-from-the-past conspiracy has a gesture of its own--a Hitler-esque salute, a gang sign, _something._ Raylan vaguely remembers the octopus symbology, but imagines only the secret greeting from _The Little Rascals._

_Fuckin' weirdos,_ Raylan thinks, is the long and short of it.

He stares Wesley down, gets a read on the man as he continues to fidget and whine. There’s a reason Wesley is alive and every other Hydra member the Winter Soldier has visited is not. Wesley is a weak link, a betrayer of the cause. 

_But he’s still alive._

Raylan smiles serenely. "Ah, you're a pussy, Wes, but you've been trained well. I want the _other_ names, the fellas who brought you in on this, not some old bleached asshole you saw at a Hydra meet-and-greet."

Wesley puffs out his chest. “I won’t name names.”

“You’ve already done that,” Tim spits. He’s been quiet throughout Raylan’s interrogation, in part because he knows Raylan can spin a “good morning” into a threat. Tim can just as well stand alert, his hand on his weapon, and make his threat known. 

“I _won’t--_ ”

Raylan cuts him off with an angry, “Either you give ‘em to me, Wesley, or I take ‘em from you.”

Raylan drops his voice real low. He says some things the others can’t hear. 

A sheen of sweat develops on Wesley’s face--across his high brow and his pointy chin.

Raylan’s squeezing names out of Wesley Arnett like he plans to make lemonade with them when Sam feels his phone buzz in his pocket. It’s Natasha, and he steps outside to take the call. 

Steve is watching Raylan work when Sam returns, but allows himself to be pulled aside for a quiet word.

"Gerald Johns is on the list," he says, but doesn't elaborate when it's clear Sam intends to have the first word.

“Neither of them is particularly clean.” 

It’s what Natasha told Sam after he texted the Marshals’ names to her earlier that morning. Sam passes this along to Steve, because if it’s _Natasha_ who tells Steve their new friends aren’t to be trusted, he won’t fault her for being protective. 

Sam nods towards Raylan, “He’s been investigated for more of his shootings than not, and most of his,” now Tim, “Are classified.” 

Steve folds his arms across his chest, processing the information. “Classified in the sense that even Nat can’t get to them?”

“Oh, please. You give the word and she’ll fax ‘em over.”

It takes some reading between the lines of Nat's response before Steve feels confident enough to render a verdict. He scratches his beard. He trimmed it some at Tim's place (and ignored Sam's taunts that he ought to keep the hairs for Tim as payment for his help), and while he knows having one is useful to the cause of minimizing knowledge of their presence, he won't keep it. 

He could never grow one, _before._

Steve says, “Then your definition of classified needs some work." 

Tim rejoins the pair, followed by Raylan, who speaks first. 

“We got a list of our own,” he says triumphantly, waving a pad of paper and on it, a collection of eight names. “Gerald Johns is in Harlan, a far ways away. We ought to check out these guys first. They’re closer.”

“That’s a long list,” Steve observes. He's thinking about what a potential goose chase this could be, compared to the one name he's confirmed through his, Sam’s, and Natasha’s own intelligence gathering.

“They’re all Dixie Mafia assholes,” Raylan says, dismissing Steve’s concerns for time. “It’s one-stop shopping.”

\- 

Steve Rogers owes Tony Stark an apology. That he ever thought Stark Tower was an eyesore was only because he had to luxury of avoiding this downtown Lexington hotel. It’s a grab-bag of styles. From Steve’s burgeoning architectural view, the Romanesque columns, Spanish Gothic window treatments, and the tall, narrow, Italianate style double doors made no structural sense. Built heavy with marble and trimmed in shining stonework, it’s a gaudy mansion. Alternatively thick and narrow, it looks like a child’s conception of a castle. 

The inside is a whole other assault upon the eyes--fleshy velvets, golds and burgundy, chairs forged from an ancient redwood, of all things--but Steve isn’t there to wax poetic about a society that hasn’t so much as elevated itself from the depression Steve remembers, but draped itself in needless jewels and hurtled itself towards a new one. The hotel, Raylan tells them, is owned by the Dixie Mafia. It’s a common meeting place for wealthy businessmen--and today, that includes their listed eight. 

Steve carries his shield in a fitted satchel across his back. It’s as inconspicuous as he can be and still carry it round. Going into battle, he feels the need to be prepared. 

It still surprises Steve that Sam doesn’t request a weapon on his own. Natasha could get it for him, easy. Every time Steve breeches the subject--he worries, really--Sam just smiles, shakes his head. 

“There’s enough of that.”

Steve remembers Sam laying cover for him against traitorous SHIELD agents in D.C. He remembers, too, that in a pinch, Sam can hold his own in hand-to-hand combat.

So for the man on his right, Steve tries not to worry.

Ahead of him, there’s the sniper and the cowboy, and neither have such qualms about carrying a firearm. Steve finds himself worrying a little for them, all the same.

Raylan is muttering excitedly about this Hydra connection maybe being the key to taking down the whole organization. “Up the ladder,” he’s breathes down Tim’s neck, “Detroit, the Tonins, _everybody._ ”

Tim, for his part, doesn’t appear to be listening. He’s focused on each coming corner as they navigate the building in search of the appointed meeting room.

Steve begins to feel some experienced apprehension. It comes, he supposes, with leading men into battle. He worries that this set-up is just a little too perfect--so many Hydra stooges in one place. Would the Winter Soldier, like Steve, Sam, and the Marshals, weigh his options and go for one man when there was a chance to get eight?

Steve tries not to get his hopes up. Wesley Arnett didn’t give these names to anyone but Raylan, and only then because the cowboy Marshal knew the make the right threats. Rather than dismemberment or death, Raylan told Arnett he’d put the squeeze on his business contacts, _destroy his empire._

And Steve has to hand it to him: like he said, Raylan knows the players.

They approach the door behind which the meeting is taking place. Tim and Raylan have plans to kick it down--and are looking to Steve for assistance. Guns are drawn. Sam is ready. Steve is about to put his shoulder through the door when--it opens.

A blonde haired man dressed impeccably in an understated gray suit and black overcoat stands before them. 

“Wynn Duffy,” Raylan observes, genuine confusion coloring his face. “You’re a part of this?”

There’s a beat--just a breath of time between Raylan Givens not really saying what he means, and Wynn Duffy hearing him loud and clear. 

“Heaven’s no,” Duffy says sweetly. “Jewish on my mother’s side. We don’t even wade close to anything with a whiff of… well.” He elevates his eyebrows tellingly. “I was just concluding some wholesome real estate dealings. What’s more American than twice-selling the land you’re stood on?” He surveys those gathered, unperturbed, and holds open the door. “Go on in.”

\- 

There's not a shred of life anywhere in the room, and Tim includes the stuffed-suits. They're all carefully-manicured mustaches, pampered and blow-dried. Their suits are heavily striped, adorned with diamond cufflinks or sharp, shiny tie clips. If they weren't all standing on ceremony, Tim suspects they'd all have their cocks out under the coffee table, being serviced by some unlucky gaggle of girls.

Tim feels uneasy entering the lavish hotel room, and immediately pulls his piece and checks all rooms and closets for any “security” these suits might have appointed after the lobby staff altered them to the presence of men with guns of their own--and worse still, badges. The feeling doesn’t pass and Tim finds himself drawn to the exteriors, peering out windows and wishing he had eyes in the hallways. 

There’s a building under construction across the way. It’s new, a future eyesore for the hotel. Condos, maybe, but Tim cannot fathom who would want to overpay to live in this part of Lexington, where nothing is green and the view out your window is a bunch of greedy businessmen drinking mint juleps unironically. Out a bright bay window, Tim stares into the pitted rooms and spaces of the building. 

Someone else stares back. 

Tim can no longer hear the conversation going on in the room. He doesn’t know what threats Raylan is lobbing, now, or even if they’re hitting their respective targets. There’s first a ringing in his ears, then only the pounding of his heart. The figure he’s seen--or thinks he’s seen--is gone. Now that he knows what he’s looking for, however, Tim sees it, and is embarrassed he didn’t realize it the second he stepped into the room: where all the other layers of blue construction tarp are secured to the outside of the building, only corner curls inward. Near it, there’s a tiny pockmark in a section of the tarp drawn across a windowless cleavage of the building. It’s just large enough for a sniper rifle. 

“Hey,” Tim says, loud and sure. He hasn’t otherwise made himself a fixture in the room, and everyone turns now, to look curiously at the quiet young man with the sharp eyes and perpetually creased brow. “Don’t everybody get excited, but there’s a sniper’s nest across the way… and a sniper.” 

The men in suits fling themselves to the floor while Raylan draws his weapon and Steve--

Always one to see a goal and meet it, no matter the obstacles, Steve pulls his red, white, and blue shield out of its leather sleeve and hurls himself _through a window._ Glass rains down in screaming streams, hitting the cold cement outside like a sudden burst of cloud into heavy rain. 

Raylan, Tim, and Sam only arrive at the shattered window in time to see Steve chase after a dark smudge of a figure in the distance. Already, it’s clear the sniper has a working head start. He disappears into a construction site--one of many in the city--and Steve pursues him without hesitation. 

It’s only a few minutes until he stalks out the way he came, defeated and alone. 

\- 

Tim leads them through the empty building towards the space he first spotted the Winter Soldier. The structure is not yet sound and each step it met with sinking unease. It’s dark, too, because the tarps are drawn in such a way as to protect against the elements--rain, snow, and sunlight, apparently. 

“It’s just around here, someplace,” Tim guesses, gauging the spaces for apartment units and finding the one that hits about the middle, four stories high. 

When Tim spies a single stream of light, he knows he’s getting close. Snagging his boot on something soft confirms it, and Tim carefully crosses the room and pulls back the blue tarp.

The Winter Soldier’s sniper’s nest is a pitiful thing. There are sandwich wrappers and a coat on the uncovered building floor. In a corner, there’s a backpack. Raylan inspects it and finds a small cache of weapons--some knives, handguns, but no rifle. 

Sam takes a knee and pulls together some scraps of paper. The Winter Soldier left in a hurry and did not take time to hide his notes. Sam recognizes some names, some places they’ve been. But most of the scribbles are in Russian, blurring only occasionally into English. There’s a newspaper photo of Steve that Sam recognizes from a _New York Times_ article several months ago. It’s folded, and between the creases Sam finds a ticket stub from the Smithsonian. 

A breath catches in his throat. He looks up at Steve in the weak light and decides, _Not yet. Not here._

Across the room, it’s Tim who doesn’t censor himself.

“What the _fuck._ ” 

The other men turn to face him, curious, but Tim isn’t ready with an explanation. He draws one hand to rest on his sidearm, then thumbs back the leather safety snap. Raylan stands at attention, not used to Tim’s uneasy display. Sam takes a cautious step forward, thinking if anyone, he’ll have the greatest insight into whatever has stunned Tim into submission. 

He’s wrong.

Tim points with his free hand. “That’s my blanket,” he says about the sodden, plaid thing on the ground. “And the pillow from my bed.” 

He wets his lips, tastes the cold air and sawdust. 

“These are my things. _Why does he have my things?_ ”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang explores the sniper's nest, takes a Harlan County detour, and then the Winter Soldier--briefly--comes out of hiding.

Between the time they’d left the apartment that morning and interrogated Wesley Arnett, the Winter Soldier had broken into Tim’s place and absconded with a few necessities: a pillow, a blanket.

“My rifle,” Tim breathes, and suddenly feels a sickening chill seep through his body. Parting from his weapons for a night was traumatizing enough; now, what if a Nazi-era super-assassin has them?

“It was locked up, right?” Sam asks.

 _“He has a metal-fucking-arm,"_ Tim snaps in return. Steve had showed him a fair amount of research the night before, but out of respect Tim had refrained from voicing that obvious--until now. "I don’t think a six-dollar lock from Home Depot is gonna cut it.”

Tim searches the backpack Raylan found, hoping against hope that if his firearms were stolen, they're here and not presently in the hands of their target. Amid the various sleek knives and powerful glocks, Tim finds nothing of his. He doesn't know whether to feel relieved or not, and supposes he won't feel _anything_ short of numb until he gets back to his apartment to check. 

He surveys the rest of his scattered belongings. It's strange to see them outside of his apartment, where they've only strayed as far as the basement laundry facilities--and even then, _rarely._ Out of place, they hardly seem like comforts, anymore. The blanket might as well be a ragged animal skin, the pillow a cement brick. He can't see for the dim light, but another sense tells Tim with a sick kind of certainty that the blanket has been shat on. 

And Tim has to stop and wonder what they're really dealing with. 

He kicks the corner of the blanket over and discovers a small stack of mail. “Jesus Christ,” he mutters, plucking his cable bill from the collection. He sees, also, the latest issue of _Guns & Ammo_ and--Tim flushes. Something a little more risque. 

He moves fast enough to grab it, prevent anyone from seeing the cover and title, but in doing so reveals his desperation and, in turn, the nature of the item.

Raylan raises an eyebrow. “He take your porn, too?”

“ _No,_ ” Tim lies.

Raylan settles his hands on his narrow hips, stands slinky and undisturbed. It’s not his things stolen and soiled and scattered in this shell of a building, after all. 

But more than that, he’s unconcerned about a secondary detail. Raylan doesn’t know how to convey that to Tim, just yet, but he makes an unflattering attempt: “I ain’t your daddy. You don’t got to lie to me.”

“Fuck you,” Tim snaps. He hastily shuffles the papers into a stack and disappears it inside his coat. His eyes scan the rest of the space, largely only in an effort to keep from meeting any of three questioning looks. He can feel his cheeks turning red and draws a shirtsleeve under his nose, pretends it's all a product of the wet season and drafty building.

No one says anything for a time, which means Tim is either a great actor or he has a very forgiving audience. 

Tim hears a sigh behind him, and suddenly Sam is on his left. Sam pulls him aside to a quieter corner of the space, where there are support beams laid against one another, not yet put to their purpose. “This is gonna sound dumb, but bear with me. Don’t sweat it."

Tim wonders if Sam is smelling the same shit-smeared blanket he is. 

"He broke into your place to learn more about you, to see if you were a threat,” Same nods towards Steve. Then he tucks his bare hands into the pockets of his coat, gives a full-body shrug and admits, “The Winter Soldier did the same to me.”

Overhearing them, Steve looks up, then away, and pretends to be interested in the twice-checked backpack. He doesn't like this topic. A while back, Sam hadn't been as calm as he was counseling Tim to be. He was upset, knowing his space and privacy were violated--all by the supposed “good guy,” no less. Their disagreement culminated in a single sentiment from Steve, and then nothing further: _Why do I have to convince you? Why can’t you just trust me?_

“He’s protecting him,” Tim gathers. The thought--and the words--come to him slowly.

Sam nods. “Steve thinks so. I’m beginning to see it. They were friends, once.”

“Who--”

Tim doesn’t get the opportunity to finish his thought. A great gust of wind passes through the building and seems to carry it, swaying the fixture uneasily, like a toddler attempting to woo a babydoll to sleep. The motion is just a touch too severe, too aware that its subject isn’t living. 

The foursome leave the building in favor of the street, now damp with the early mist of an approaching thunderstorm. The sky is dark and heavy-looking, and each man feels within him a strange displacement of time. It’s still early, yet. Still morning. 

“These are our options,” Steve says, and intentionally or not, it sounds like he’s delegating to his troops. “We leave a two-man team here to watch that sniper’s nest while the others check out the name in Harlan. Either way, we evacuate the building.” 

“An entire hotel?” Sam asks skeptically, and even before his lips touch, finished, Raylan whips out his pistol and fires twice into the air. 

“Shots fired,” he proclaims flatly. “That’s cause enough to evacuate.”

Tim rubs his brow, feeling a patented Raylan-induced migraine coming on. He turns to Steve instead, hoping there’s something salvageable from this venture. “You got a timetable for break-ins verses murder? Have we got a shot in actually placing his guy?”

Steve gives it some thought, but before he can render a verdict Raylan interrupts with a proposal of his own making: “I vote we all go to Harlan. We got a definite name, at least. Can we even tell what windows he could hit with this space?”

“Any of ‘em,” Tim shoots back, “If he’s a sure shot.”

“He is,” Steve says, then sighs. He’s not opposed to leaving behind the large, aesthetically displeasing building. They could wait around and watch the stuffed-suits, and the Winter Soldier might be able to pick them off, anyway. In the meantime a confirmed target is unknowingly being stalked in his home in Harlan County. 

“We impart on them,” Steve stresses each word, “The importance of making themselves scarce.”

“Then we go to Harlan?” Raylan confirms.

“Then we go to Harlan.”

\- 

Raylan does the "imparting" as best he knows how, and the job is a relatively swift one. 

They’re leaving the lobby when Raylan inclines his head to Steve, whose meager beard-and-ballcap disguise have nonetheless proven effective, and says, “Harlan ain’t a welcoming place, even to the likes of you. I know a guy there. He could get you answers. Tell us exactly where this cabin is, at any rate.”

Given what’s unfolding now, how Hydra has a hand in every dark crevice of America, Steve doesn’t even put up a fight. He just voices the only question worth asking, anymore. 

“Can he be trusted?”

“I’d take a bullet for him,” Raylan allows lightly. Tim raises an eyebrow, but says nothing.

In the parking lot, Tim throws the mess of magazines, bills, and scraps of paper ( _He even took my grocery list,_ Tim thinks miserably) into the backseat of his SUV. He doesn't much appreciate being on the other side of an intelligence-gathering expedition. It feels both too familiar and too surreal, like he's got his hands on his old school records and is trying to reconcile what he once was with what he is, now. He tries to see himself in the things the Winter Soldier stole, if only to gauge for himself if he’s been labeled a threat. 

Tim checks his mirrors twice. He's not exactly looking for cars. 

“Don’t listen to Sam,” Raylan tells Tim as they settle in for the long drive to Harlan. “Your shit in his spiderhole? _Creepy as fuck._ ”

"Hey thanks," Tim drawls, peppering his tone with a false, sugary pleasantness.

Rain starts to pelt the car window. Tim checks that Sam and Steve are still following. 

Raylan hasn’t--as he is usually prone--fallen asleep or messed with Tim’s radio and _then_ fallen asleep. He’s watching the side mirrors, too, still in wonder of who is following. He suddenly barks out a laugh, exuberant and happy, then bites his lower lip. 

He never asked once how Tim even got caught up in this chase. He doesn’t care. No answer could match the magic of the situation at hand, but Raylan doesn’t even want to chance damaging it. He feels like a child, ignoring his Aunt Helen when she tells him Godzilla isn’t real, it’s just a puppet for the movie.

"This is pretty fucking cool," Raylan says. It's a compliment, an issue of thanks, and a simple observation all in one. 

Even though Tim thinks they'd have better luck catching this apparition of a man by performing a seance, and his apartment has been broken into, he is inclined to agree. "It fucking is." 

He can't help but smile. 

\- 

On rocky backroads and winding trails, Steve’s rusted-out truck finally seems suited for a job. It handles the obstacles like they’re familiar to it. 

Steve drives this leg, which Sam only allows in an effort to distract Steve from the matter at hand. Certainly, Sam _wants_ Steve to face the fact that the Winter Soldier is as great a threat as the research says, and his activities are only expanding in scope… but Sam knows Steve _is_ thinking about that. The Winter Soldier occupies Steve’s every waking thought, and when that isn’t enough, he slinks between the shadows in Steve’s dreams. 

Of this, Sam is certain. He’s seen the heartbroken expression on Steve’s face when he waves up. It’s only in dreams that he ever gets as close as to speaking with the Winter Soldier. 

“Hey,” Sam starts, but doesn’t continue. The notes, photograph of Steve, and Smithsonian ticket stub he found in the sniper’s nest are burning a hole in his jacket pocket. 

\- 

They drive--Sam with Steve, Raylan with Tim--until the road peeters out beneath them and they’re forced to make the rest of the trek on foot.

The woods are cold and empty, and except for crossing a set of decommissioned railroad tracks, there's no sign of human life. There are only trees, grown tall and by their own plan, amidst underbrush and soil. Tall grass and shrubs so cover the earth that each step is uneven. 

A creek, bloated with rainwater, licks at their boots as they cross atop slick stones. 

Raylan crosses the terrain with practiced ease. The others quickly adapt to the conditions and give little thought as to why they are all such quick studies. 

The rain had fallen in earnest for the better part of the drive and is still with them, now. 

“Your friend will be there?” Steve asks. He’s pulled the hood from his sweater over his head, and given Sam his cap. It’s little protection from the rain, but the sky is a little brighter and everyone thinks it’ll stop soon, anyway. 

“We ain’t friends, as such,” Raylan admits. He takes off his hat, dusts the water droplets from its brim, and sets it back on his head. Tim keeps thinking it'll stop being cool the more he does it, but no. At least, Steve hasn't had his fill of Raylan's antics. He smiles every time the lawman expertly dons his Stetson. 

“You said you’d take a bullet for him,” Sam frowns, and wonders what is it about these Kentucky Marshals that they can’t seem to call one another ‘friend.’ 

“The shit he gets himself into, odds are I will.”

Raylan steps into a patch of grass that has been worn nearly to the dirt with use. They're getting closer.

When the steep climb finally plateaus into a steady trek, they step out of the woods and into a clearing where the expected hunting cabin stands sunkissed and idyllic. Less expected, they see Boyd Crowder in his too-small peacoat, drinking a beer on Gerald Johns’ porch.

Boyd stands on ceremony. The cold has caused him to bundle up more than usual, but nothing--even the passing rain--can seem to keep his jet-black hair from reaching skywards. Unlike the hotel staff, self-important businessmen, and countless others, Boyd Crowder doesn’t miss a thing. He knows precisely who is stalking up to the cabin alongside the familiar-faced Marshals. 

He whistles, low and impressed. "I must say, Raylan. This is better than the astronaut."

Raylan jerks his head towards Tim. “Credit where it’s due,” he says. 

It’s a fair attempt at puffing Tim up after his shaken display, earlier, but the audience is wrong. There aren’t many people whose opinions Tim values--Art’s, maybe, and the guy who runs a Kentucky-based beer and pizza review blog--but Boyd Crowder sure as hell doesn’t rank among them. In fact, Tim is marginally certain Boyd has plotted to kill him on several occasions--or, at the very least, has had designs to plug Tim with a few new holes, by some happy accident. Between his skinhead and preacher pasts, as well as his crime lord future, only Boyd’s philosophy has remained steady: _better him than me._

It doesn’t lend itself much to Tim’s favor.

Steve and Sam greet Boyd, but their attention is elsewhere. It's drawn to every crushed twig or rustled branch. They expected to meet a man here, but not this lean figure with beetle-black eyes and a jockeying smile. 

"Why's the door open, Boyd," Raylan asks, coming to rest on the porch. He angles himself comfortably against a cherrywood bannister. Of course, a wealthy bastard like Gerald Johns would import the makings of his own hunting cabin. Raylan nods toward the slackened door and the spread of leaves littering the pass. "Seems ominous."

"Well, Raylan my old friend, there's a simple explanation." Boyd waits a beat before actually giving it. “I looked in on dear Gerald and I wish I hadn't.”

Almost without thought, each man takes a whiff of the air.

“He dead?” Raylan asks, squinting through the doorway. The smell says enough. 

“Uh,” Boyd starts, uncharacteristically without words, “I think you’ll find it’s a bit more than that.” 

Tim pushes past them both and leads the way. He’s curious, now, even though he knows the gruesome trend in the Winter Soldier’s clandestine meetings. Finding the stinking, blood-soaked body in a far room of the cabin, Tim can’t say he’s disappointed. The eyes seemed to have popped out. One sags in the man’s eyelid as if it’s just vacationing there, relaxing in the hammock-shaped cut of skin. The other has sunk to the floor, leaving a slug-like streak of blood of viscera down the man’s sallow skin. The skull is malformed, sinking in at the sides and bulging on top. It looks like a child has angrily left a fistful of Play-Dough out in the sun to harden and crust. 

“It’s Gerald Johns,” Raylan confirms, although there’s no need to ask what’s happened to him.

Steve ducks his head to his chest and swears softly. He pulls the sweatshirt hood off his head, like he doesn’t feel he deserves to hide from this. He stares at the body, not really seeing it. Tim crouches down, curious about the strange pattern of bruises across the skull. He realizes they’d match a spread of fingers, but doesn’t fit his own to be sure. 

“He’s missing an ear,” Tim observes from his position closest to the body. He looks up at Steve. “Does that… mean something?”

Steve closes his eyes. Frustration builds at his temples and colors his face. He carries an expression like he’s asked this sort of question all the time, and is finally trading his carefully-maintained patience for anger.

“No,” he answers simply, quietly. 

It is in this instance that Raylan and Tim are given just the briefest glimpse into what Sam and Steve have faced for the last several months. Hours of research, legwork, and efforts are all for naught. The Winter Soldier is always faster, more efficient. The search never ends; failure only builds. 

Gerald Johns is dead. The Winter Soldier did the deed last night, and they wasted an afternoon coming down to Harlan to confirm the expected. No life is spared if the Winter Soldier feels lied to. Wesley Arnett, a real know-nothing, should credit his life to this fact. 

The body is broken and corrupted before them, sat like a question mark. What now?

“Where’d you get the beer?” Raylan asks, frowning at Boyd. The bottle in his hand looks fairly tempting, especially after their long hike through the wilderness. 

Boyd throws his head back, indicating the fridge. 

“You’re drinking a dead man’s beer?” Steve asks, seemingly more taken aback than he was at finding a body with its skull squeezed like a tube of toothpaste. 

The Harlan native takes another refreshing sip. “Didn’t think he’d miss it.”

Boyd Crowder will forever pride himself on scandalizing Captain America. 

"And you just found him like this?" Sam asks through the fabric of the shirt he's drawn over his mouth and nose. Most everyone else seems acclimated to the smell, which--well. Sam doesn’t want to think about _that._

Boyd blinks. "Well, no, I saw him last night."

"Alive?"

"No, as you see him. A little fresher, truth be told. We had a business transaction to discuss and--"

Sam throws up his arms and stalks right out of the cabin. In his wake, Steve balks, thinking of _all the wasted time_. "And you didn't call the police?" 

"This is Harlan, Captain." Boyd says so like the county is a state of mind to be observed, more than a geographical presence. 

"New rule," Raylan grinds out, knowing full well asking Boyd to stake out the Johns cabin should have entailed confirming whether or not the occupant was still alive. "If it's got nothing to do with you, Boyd, you're to tell me about all the goddamn murders you stumble across."

Boyd smiles lazily. "If you miss our chats, Raylan, all you need to do is pick up the phone once in--"

 _Six hours,_ Tim thinks. _Six hours round trip._ Nevermind what they could have done with all that time-- _what did the Winter Soldier do?_ Tim wonders if there will be more shit to find on his belongings, or if his own registered firearms will feature in any new murders. 

They trek back through the woods in silence. The sky has opened but all of the sunlight seems caught up in the trees and never reaches the backs of their necks. 

“Tim.” Sam says as they hit the gravely pass where their vehicles are parked. “You got heated seats in that monstrosity?”

Tim frowns at the term. He likes his SUV. “Comes standard.”

“I’m riding with you.”

Contrary to Tim’s worst fears, Sam doesn’t want to have a heartfelt veteran-to-veteran talk. He genuinely wants a cozy ride. He even falls asleep. 

Tim finds it somewhat comforting that, even in this global ( _intergalactic?_ Tim wonders) battle between order and chaos, security and freedom, there are still footsoldiers in desperate need of a few hours of rest.

It’s likewise best that Raylan is riding with Steve, Tim thinks. Raylan is cool as they come, but he knows when to dial up the charm. He’s probably thrilling Steve with tales of Mexican standoffs and sun-drenched Miami beaches teeming with bare bodies and crime, alike. All the stories--Tim has heard his fair share--are wild and ridiculous, but no less true. 

Tim smiles a little, picturing it. Even sat in a car with Captain America, Raylan Givens is still his own hero.

\- 

They return to the Winter Soldier’s nest only to find it’s been cleared out. Tim’s remaining things are torn and scattered, and although no one says so, there’s an undeniable rage to the task--as stark as though it was painted on the walls. 

Even the backpack is shredded. Sam gets the sinking feeling that the Winter Soldier was searching for what had been taken from him--his incoherent scribbles, now a wrinkled ball in Sam’s pocket.

The space feels even more dank than before. It’s as if the room remembers them, has held their smell and expelled breath in hopes for their return. 

“Detroit,” Tim says, kicking at a ragged chunk of the blanket that used to belong to him. “At least of late, these guys have been deep with the Detroit mob scene. If Barnes is chasing known associates, that’s where he’d go.”

Steve looks at him sharply. They’d taken care not to give a name. 

“I’ve been to the Smithsonian,” Tim says, not unkindly. His foot settles on something soft and with a little give. Tim briefly thinks it's some kind of animal carcass, but when he kneels to inspect it, Tim discovers otherwise. It’s a slightly damp loaf of sliced white bread. The plastic wrapping is torn and Tim can clearly make out bites taken directly from the loaf, spanning three, four pieces of bread at once. It’s cold, but not as cold as it should be, given the weather. Tim is about to voice his discovery when Steve disappears into the building after a faint noise--hardly anything more than the creaking of the building, except that it’s _so much more._

It's one creak followed by another, then another, in steady succession. It's movement. 

Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier, is in the building.

Each man stands incomprehensibly still. He listens for a telltale shift in the air, the warmth generated by even the most miniscule vibrations overhead. After a moment, then air goes silent again and Steve positions himself just outside the doorway. His head and hands are raised, he’s unarmed. He’s listening. 

“Bucky…?”

He’s taking a tentative approach, now that the assassin has proven himself a far more experienced hunter than those hunting _him._

Barnes drops unexpectedly from the empty space above the ceiling beams just ahead of Steve, and throws his metal arm across the super-soldier’s throat. Steve lets out a gasp of air and struggles to regain composure. The rest, startled into inaction, can only bring themselves to stare at the figure cut by this ghost, this vision they've been so slow to find that he actually circled back around his crimes and found _them._

There’s a strong and solid form beneath the wet, sagging fabric of a sweatshirt, a massive black coat, and canvas-heavy work pants. Underneath a mass of filthy hair, there are keen eyes seeing every potential threat, weapon, and exit in the room. 

Tim and Raylan don’t yet reach for their sidearms. For the moment, Barnes seems stable, willing to take an audience with the man he first incapacitated. 

He’s studying them, now. If his eyes stray from one body, it isn’t long before they settle on another. His chest and shoulders heave with each breath and it quickly becomes apparent that, despite the layers, the clothing is thin and not suited for the weather. The sweatshirt is even caught on his shoulder, threads fraying into nothing. It sports a widening tear where part of his collarbone should be, but isn’t. There’s just the smooth expanse of metal met with the rough edges of burnt and scarred skin.

He jerks again and half the room thinks he’s going for a weapon. In reality, he’s only shivering. The Winter Soldier is cold, yet has no inclination to hold himself or seek warmth. 

_Shouldn’t have shit on and tore up my blanket,_ Tim thinks dumbly. He wants so badly to take up his weapon, but knows doing so is more of an invitation now than a precaution. He doesn’t have to see the file Steve keeps tucked into his jacket and hidden from view to know that before them is an expert assassin. He stands like one, lies in wait like one. There’s a strength to his lithe form that speaks of incessant conditioning. He’s been built for this.

When Steve starts gasping out words-- _Bucky, wait, please, just stay_ \--Barnes is quick to ball his fists. 

“Leave me alone!” he roars. “I have to do this!”

He juts his face out, angry and feral. When he speaks he shows his teeth. 

There’s little of him to make out in the darkened building, but there are still smooth panes of flesh and pink lips fit around angry words. Tim can’t help but think, _what a handsome young man, screaming._

The color returns to Steve’s face and he breathes in great lungfuls of air. Barnes doesn’t let him speak. Instead, he pulls a sleek semi-automatic rifle from his left side and holds it--not like he intends to shoot, but like an extension of his arm--and points it at Steve. It’s accusing, not threatening. Tim and Sam see the difference, and Raylan reluctantly accepts their view, keeps his hand off his own sidearm for the time being. 

“The man,” Barnes growls, his words near indistinguishable for the way he chops at them with his mouth, “Who brought me food for-- _eight years._ I found him in Pittsburgh. In Pittsburgh where he has a family and a dog.” Barnes shakes harder. “He swore he didn’t know anything, didn’t know _anyone._ There were so many people in that room. Where they kept me? And so many more who, who-- _came to see_.” 

Barnes slips his metal digits into place. Sam says something--the words are not important--but his tone implores restraint. 

“Do you understand?” Barnes’ grip tightens on the weapon. His thumb caresses the trigger. “Do you see why he had to die?”

Raylan draws and shoots, beaming Barnes in the back of the hand. Barnes does not retaliate, does not cry out. He only puts his shoulder into Tim, who’s closest and in the way of the window, where Barnes is then free to leap from the fourth story of the building. 

Sam shoves Raylan. “Don’t fucking shoot at him!” 

“Is that not our guy?” Raylan demands, red-faced. 

“Steve doesn't want to hurt him!” 

“You don't want to stop him murdering those people, neither?”

Steve barrels through their row and goes out the window after Barnes. Raylan swears loudly, then heads for the stairs. By the time he hits the ground floor he can see that Barnes has disappeared again into the next string of construction sites cornering the hotel. Steve continues after him, distraught. Raylan follows, gun at the ready. By the time Sam and Tim reach the landing, Sam falls back and Tim does the same. They both know the feeling of a lost target. 

Navigating the inside of the building is like following a stream of metal guts. There are beams stood vertical, positioned horizontal, buttressing walls and outlining plexiglass corners. Steve follows the sound of Barnes’ retreat deep into the fixture, where enough wall and tarp and metal sheets have been laid that it is completely dark. He calls out, helpless to do anything greater. He asks for forgiveness. 

Barnes doubles back and crosses him, heads again to the open space between the hotel, his sniper position, and the maze of construction. Steve is able to snag the arm of Barnes' coat. Barnes drops out of it easily enough, but does not take the escape so readily available to him. Instead, he stops. He turns and allows Steve to crash into him, then fall back on his ass and onto the concrete ground. 

They remain that way for a moment. Barnes, much shorter in stature but nonetheless towering over Steve, appears shapeless in his stolen wears. He's stood in such a way that he could be offering Steve a hand, helping him up had Barnes not been the one to put him there. 

Steve doesn't lift himself up. It's as though he's agreed not to move, made some kind of deal with himself that doing so will startle the assassin and he'll flee. His shield rests untouched at his side. The clouds open up again and rain starts to pelt their forms, fill Steve's upturned shield. 

They speak.

At least, it appears that way to those watching. 

They don't speak for long, because suddenly the Winter Soldier is shaking his mass of hair and he's running again, disappearing inside the construction and then, maybe, the wilderness far beyond it. Steve races after him, his shield left behind. It takes on water. 

“ _Bucky!”_ They hear Steve call out, desperate. He’s begging, now. It’s all they hear in the empty lot. “Bucky! _Please!_ It's not too late!" The pleas bounce against metal, get swallowed up by wood, lost in plastic tarps.

Steve gives an angry shout and the building heaves. He's punched the thing, and it's a wonder it doesn't topple and bury him. 

A final, truly heartbroken _“Please”_ follows, and then Steve falls silent. The rain picks up and hits every strip of metal and plank of wood, building up a cacophonous sound so sudden and so loud that it almost entertains. 

Raylan stalks away, possibly to the car or anywhere else to get out of the rain. He’s frustrated, now, because there’s _no one_ he’d chase for months before sooner putting a bullet in their side to slow ‘em down. He leaves Tim and Sam alone to watch for Steve’s return. 

And suddenly, it’s as though time has slowed to accommodate all non-super soldiers.

“Well,” Tim says, settling on a truth he supposed not many were privy to, “I guess that’s one thing they didn’t put in the display.”

Sam’s head snaps up and he fixes Tim with a hard stare. It’s warning and anger and a heartache all its own. Tim feels a rush of regret and looks away. 

“I mean, _I get it._ ” It comes out a mumble, but Tim knows he’s being heard. Being _understood,_ even, for as little good as that’s ever done him. “Do we go after him or…?”

Sam sighs. He's asked himself that very question more times than he can count. “Detroit, you said?”

“S’where I would go. Tonin crime family tree might have lost its head, but--”

“Two more will take its place,” Sam supplies.

“It’s a good system,” Tim jokes humorlessly. “Gotta hand it to ‘em, there.”

Sam smiles. It’s forced. Tim apologizes. 

Beyond the small builders’ awning, the rain falls a little harder, a little louder against the concrete ground and draped plastic tarps. The sound of each colliding droplet seems to amplify, billow out like a wrinkle in a silken expanse of fabric.

“It’s just…” Sam doesn’t think he can explain himself properly, which is a new feeling for him. As a counselor, he’s always been quick with--if not an answer, then at least a gentle word to bridge the gap between the known and the unknown. It's a superpower in its own right, to speak and calm the ravaged souls of soldiers. He settles on, _“It’s fucking weird.”_

It feels right. Tim even smiles, satisfied. 

“You know, going into the Army, we unlearn civilian life. Coming back, we gotta play catch-up. We’re dropped back into a world that’s home, somehow, but not.” Sam wishes he could stop talking, but the health of his brothers in arms has always been his passion, and he’s never seen a brother more sick than Sergeant James Barnes, the Winter Soldier. 

He scrubs the rainwater from his forehead and continues, frustrated, “And it’s bad enough, just the regular stuff--too-soft beds and grocery stores, mistaking litter for an IED, a car alarm for mortar fire. It’s a bad way to live, but it feels safer, doesn’t it? I tell the men and women who come to group or seek my help individually that we’ve all got to unlearn that behavior, to a point, and _come home._ ” Sam stops, then find he can’t continue without issuing a quiet admission: “I don’t do that, even. Not always.” 

He’s quiet for a long time until he starts up again, loud and brash and as if there was never anything that gave him pause. “And then New York happened, and heroes became-- _that_ , and what are _we?_ ” The thought is too heavy and too troubling that Sam doesn’t finish it. He shakes his head, mutters, “Hydra. It’s so unreal.”

Steve finally comes away from the unfinished tower of metal and designs opposite Sam and Tim, only to stand in the middle of the alley. He doesn’t necessarily want to join the others; he doesn’t necessarily want to be alone anymore, either. 

He stands like he means to surrender. It's not a good look for him, but he must feel it is necessary, because he holds. And holds. 

Tim looks around, wondering if the Winter Soldier will make another unexpected appearance. He does not.

“The only thing that keeps me going, sometimes, is knowing this is at least familiar to _him,_ ” Sam says, drawing his tirade to a close. He almost goes too quiet for Tim to hear when he says, “‘Cause I gotta think, how scary is that? We only have to deal with our heads playing tricks on us. This is literally a part of Steve’s war here at home.”

Tim thinks about where all they’ve been, and where they have yet to go. There are parts of this country that won’t feel like home to even Captain America himself.

"Barnes dispatching of some Detroit hard cases can really only benefit humanity," Tim says. "Why not... Take a break?"

Sam casts Tim a flat look. "Does Captain America look like the kind of guy who takes breaks?"

"Neither do you," Tim affirms. "Just thought I'd ask." 

Sam leans against the building, sinking further away from the rain. Tim doesn’t mind it, so much. 

“As hard as we are going after him,” Sam says, “Steve just wants to protect him. He knows if we fall away, Hydra or SHIELD or something worse will fill the gap. Everybody wants this guy. No one more than Steve.”

Hat pulled low, Raylan returns from wherever it was he disappeared to in the first place. He shakes the rain from his jacket and takes in some empty space against the building. 

“He’s in the wind,” Raylan says, assured-like, as though he circled the area once to check. He lobs his head over to Tim, looks the younger Marshal up and down. “Crash at my place tonight?”

Tim frowns instinctively. _“Why?”_

“You really wanna be alone in your apartment after all this?” Raylan looks up, meaning the fourth-floor sniper’s nest furnished with his stolen belongings. Tim has a sinking feeling Steve put Raylan up to this--earlier, during the drive back from Harlan. It's not a particularly Raylan-thing to do.

“Your place is a hotel room,” Tim mutters. “With _out_ a pull-out couch, if memory serves.”

“Eh,” Raylan hedges. As if he’s been in _that_ shithole in weeks. “Still got the keys to the Monroe place.”

Tim shakes his head. Of course Raylan would keep a spare set of keys to mansion property confiscated by the U.S. Marshal service. “Jesus Christ, that asshole. All that money, all the… _South will rise again_ drag? He’s probably Hydra.”

Raylan wrinkles his nose. Suddenly the idea doesn’t appeal to him, either. “Go in on a room at the Best Western?”

Sam ducks his head, laughs. There’s no calling one another ‘friend,’ but in a pinch they’ll get a hotel room together. 

He looks out over the lot, over Steve's bowed head and decides Kentucky is a bust. 

He claps Tim on the shoulder, they shake hands. He does the same with Raylan then addresses them both: “Thank you. For all your help. We got pretty close, this time.”

\- 

“Did I say bye?”

“You said bye. And thank you.”

“Oh. Good.” 

It’s the second time Sam has confirmed to Steve that, _yes,_ he was a perfect gentlemen leaving behind Kentucky and the Marshals, even if his head and heart weren’t in it. His hair is still plastered, blonde and wet, to his forehead. He doesn't seem to notice this fact when he goes to draw it back and his fingers hit where his hair might rest when dry.

Sam, thinking about Tim’s observation and quiet admission, asks how long they're going to keep this up. 

“That was the closest we've been, yet,” Steve says. Even his response is optimistic in its omission of an actual answer. 

Sam shakes his head. “Not the search,” he clarifies. 

Steve doesn't move, doesn't so much as draw breath. “He's my friend.”

“He's not your only one.”

“Right,” Steve laughs humorlessly. “I’ve got at least four. There’s you and Natasha. And the other two don’t know who I am.”

Peggy’s mind is… fading is a generous term. And Bucky’s is so sharp it hurts. It is only by the grace of Steve’s inherent goodness that he hasn’t turned away from everything he once knew in an attempt to shelter himself from incurring still more loss. To see how much the only remaining ties to his life--his one, true life in his own time--have changed is frightening. _Steve_ is frightened. Brooklyn, and the Army, and the war--if nothing else, they taught him to confront his fears. But the strength to do so came to Steve early, and was nurtured by another. 

Any strength Steve has, he owes it to the friendship of James Barnes. 

“You told me something once,” Steve murmurs. They stopped for gas station coffee twenty minutes back and Steve is holding his with both hands even though the heat is lost. “That I think about a lot. You said I can do anything, whatever makes me happy.”

“And you said you didn't know what made you happy,” Sam prompts gently.

“I haven't been happy for a long time,” Steve admits. It's a strange sentiment to voice, but he's heard similar. People on the subway, in cafés--they talk nonstop about happiness, how to get it, or their lack of it. It bewildered him, initially, but now he understands that it matters. 

"Seeing Bucky again…” _Devastated Steve,_ primarily, once he understood what torments had befallen his friend. But he didn’t feel only unparalleled sadness and fault. Steve admits quietly, “Seeing him again made me happy. Made me hopeful."

Sam glances at the GPS on his phone, then takes the appropriate exit. For a moment, Steve thinks what he’s said is so phenomenally stupid and misguided that Sam has chosen not to hear it. But Sam starts to nod, slowly, like he’s beginning to see a little more of Steve’s reasoning. 

“Well, at least you took my advice.”

\- 

In the Marshal's Lexington office, Raylan and Tim's activities over the past day and a half do not go unnoticed. When Tim is asked by Chris the IT guy why three separate laptops have him logged-in to several identical federal databases, he comes up with a hasty lie (“Computer froze. Computer froze three times.”). Raylan is likewise questioned about his absence, as well as the fact that he did not complete two scheduled afternoon prisoner transports.

“Oh-fucking-well” was his response. Raylan’s somewhat less creative than Tim in this respect.

Beyond that, Raylan’s just angry. Angry that they weren’t able to track down the murderer, angry that those gruesome deaths have to remain unexplained. Several times that day, he turns to Tim sat at the desk next to him, like he wants to strategize, to figure a way of keeping an ear to the ground and seeing the matter through. Tim, not wanting to even play audience for such talk, makes himself scarce. 

He’s in the breakroom getting coffee for the second time that morning when Raylan finds him, says the Chief wants a word. Tim can’t very well avoid _that,_ so, coffee in hand--he goes. 

Rachel's got the office phone pinned between her shoulder and ear, as well as her cell open, a pen in her mouth, and her hand on her computer keyboard when they enter. She looks down her nose at Tim, then at the evidence of his luxurious coffee break. “You can drink that, but do it quick. Then take a piss because you’ve got a long night ahead of you.”

“Uh. I missed something. Did you pee in this?” Tim takes a cautious sip. 

Rachel rolls her eyes and completes her calls, notes, emails, and texts. She hardly has a moment to gulp down another breath before explaining to the two Marshals under her command that their “off the record” excursion has jumped to the books.

“Weird break-ins,” she says, her dark eyes settling on Tim. “That’s what you were looking for, right?” 

She doesn’t wait for him to confirm anything before starting in on the matter at hand: A curious break-in, and the shaken-up victim is a wealthy former businessman-turned-judge who expects around the clock observation of his home and offices. 

It’s in only this short briefing that Tim and Raylan realize they’ve underestimated just how fucking scummy their state is. Rachel explains the circumstances around the case, but neither man is listening. They’re each intimately aware of what this is--more so than the accompanying officers and strategists gathered in the conference room--and are both in the midst of planning their next move. 

Rachel sees it on their faces and stops, sighs, and closes the office door. 

“Stationing bodies outside this guy’s house is just asking for it,” Raylan speaks up immediately. He’s pulled and made copies of the files depicting the Winter Soldier’s efficient work, and drops them on Rachel’s desk. “There will be a bloodbath.” 

Rachel, dressed impeccably in a slate gray suit, reiterates that she cannot allow whatever project they’re working on to interfere with the orders from on high. 

“Project,” Raylan scoffs, opening the file and fanning out the crime scene photos. “This ain’t just for scrapbooking, Rachel. We follow through with this and we’ve pitted ourselves--our office--against Captain-fucking-America.”

“Rachel,” Tim says, and maybe his tone betrays the fact that he got an uneasy night’s sleep in a hotel, or is still worried about returning home. It's practically a _plea_ , which is so unheard of from him that the Chief Deputy takes notice. “This guy,” Tim shakes his head, at a loss. “If he wants this judge dead, go ahead and call the morgue. And make sure they got space ‘cause anyone who goes up against him is gonna bite it, too. _Hard._ ” 

“That’s your read on him?” Rachel asks, brow creasing. “This… friend of Captain America?”

“His best friend.”

She smooths a hand over her hair, draws it back to rub at her aching neck. Every bizarre detail of this case aside, it unnerves her how often being in a position of leadership means going against her friends.

“Give him the heads up,” she allows. “Anything more… I can’t allow it.”

Neither Tim nor Raylan press for specific parameters. To their ears, they’ve been given the green light for whatever they want to do, as quickly as they can do it. 

"Call him," Raylan instructs when they’re out of the office and Tim is clumsily depositing his coffee cup on the corner of his desk. 

"Like Captain America gave me his phone number," he says, head bowed in an attempt to reign Raylan in to more inconspicuous planning. 

Raylan throws up his hands. "Sam, then."

"I think we all agreed this was a one-time deal."

Raylan stares, then shelves his hands on his hips. “Fuckin’ idiot.”

“Me?” Tim frowns. _“Them?”_

“All of us. Me. _Shit._ ”

Both men arrive at the sorry realization that whatever they do--whatever they _can_ do--is deeply limited. Miss a shot? _Allow one?_

Raylan drops his voice, asks Tim seriously: “You ever have a sniper battle before? How’d it go?”

Tim feels all the coffee in his stomach start to churn. 

“Quickly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yikes, this was long! But not much longer yet--the end is in sight! Like the next chapter might be the last? Maybe! I've got to write it, first. Thanks for reading, pals!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A standoff.

For his own safety, Judge Stephen McKinney relocated his wife to Louisville, his mistress to Frankfort, and himself to his horse farm out in Menifee County, near Frenchburg. It was a newly built T-shaped American farmhouse, a two-story fixture positioned towards the end of his 40 acre lot. An idealized location for his retirement years, McKinney feels returning to it now is a duly ominous sign. 

But then, he’s got firepower at his back, which wasn’t in his retirement dreams in the slightest.

The house is flanked by a tall barn--a fixture almost as old as the surrounding trees--and a recently built mass of stables. McKinney’s horses--playfully termed his ‘army,’ given his penchant for collecting breeds used in World War I, primarily, and only the occasional race horse--occupied the bulk of the property, grazing lazily and living out the remainder of their lives. Clydesdales, Walers, and even a Boulonnais have the run of the place. 

The location is a late-made change, taking Tim and a number of officers out of Lexington at around seven in the evening. On the property, they’re met by nearly a dozen individuals McKinney has hired from a private security firm. There’s much made of the addition, with Lexington PD generally feeling they cannot be in a command position if they are not, in fact, _in command._ They threaten to leave and McKinney calls their bluff, then offers a generous payment for anyone who wishes to stay and operate alongside his own detail. 

Two former Marines take up the offer. Tim mumbles that he’ll stay as a volunteer, and is razzed for it. Instead of admitting his true interest in staying--that is, attempting to corral a superhuman assassin--he says that he has orders to be here, and Chief Deputy Brooks would never allow him to accept payment from a civilian. 

“Yeah, she’s a real man-eater,” one of guys jeers. Tim knows him to be former Lexington SWAT and decides that if the Winter Soldier starts dropping bodies, he won’t overexert himself in favor of this guy’s sorry life. 

The hired hands have nothing to say throughout the exchange. Tim wonders if they’re Hydra, but can’t exactly ask. They’re all broad shouldered and tattooed arms crossed over beefy chests, dripping in tactical gear like they were swarovski crystals. Tim, in his U.S. Marshal’s windbreaker, gets the impression he’s meant to feel like a molehill in the company of mountains. But Tim’s got his rifle slung across his shoulder and a few tattoos of his own, so he accepts the military grade headset same as everyone else.

Tim creeps around the property, alternatively wading through tall grass and slipping past trees. There’s a tiny church nestled at the edge of the forest, made of wood and packed into the earth with stone. It’s falling apart and Tim can practically see out the other side when he pushes open the door. It smells like animal shit and mold--thick in the air, earthy, but fundamentally out of place. There are narrow lines of pews, then a podium. The fixture never had any windows, and Tim doesn’t count the entire side of the building that’s peeling away from the support beams and exposing the house of worship to the dense woods beyond its walls. He points his flashlight into every dark corner, but the space is empty. 

Tim turns off the flashlight and lets his eyes adjust to the dark. 

Even though Barnes is undoubtedly stalking the place, Tim feels like he’s here alone. Raylan took a Lexington detail in case Barnes went back for any of the Dixie Mafia hotshots, and even though Tim knew their company for only a day and a half, he feels the distinct absence of Steve and Sam.

The wind carries through the property, drawing soft sighs from the feather reedgrass. That’s all Tim hears when he’s out there, alone in the dark: an opinion of exasperation already formed of his task. He thinks about calling out for Barnes, maybe startling him away if he has indeed followed the cavalcade to this rural county. But even when he finds himself separated from the others, Tim cannot so much as whisper the Winter Soldier’s name. 

It’s not that Barnes _could_ be hiding some two feet away from Tim; it’s just that Tim can’t be sure he isn’t. 

As the night progresses, the temperature drops. Tim feels the cold cut through his coat, through his bulletproof vest, and straight to his bones. He’d rather continue walking, but knows he ought to set up his own sniper position. 

By nine in the evening, Tim is on the roof of the barn. He’s flat on his stomach for almost an hour before he sees it: Barnes’ new nest. He’s balanced high on one of the coiling branches of a champion tree that hangs over the stables. 

Tim bites his lip to keep from swearing over the comms system. He’d looked at that tree, too, for a possible location, but decided against it. The view into the house was better than even from the tall barn, but the positioning was poor; he’d have to be an acrobat or a eunuch to hold position on a tree branch until morning. He thought about the wind picking up, too, and maybe not getting a clear shot out from beneath the leaves.

Barnes may have considered those hurdles, then dismissed them. He’s only just visible lying flat along a high, narrow branch, legs twisted around its length, the heels of his boots pitted against the trunk.

Tim is genuinely surprised to discover that the Winter Soldier doesn’t… _seem_ to know he’s being watched. Tim holds his breath and adjusts his handheld night-vision scope. It isn't as high-powered as the one he used in search of targets in Afghanistan, but Barnes isn't hundreds of meters away, either. The difference met, Tim can clearly see him. It’s an almost intimate view of the man. From Tim’s position, he has a view of Barnes’ backside, and only a quarter of his face when he turns. 

His features are further obscured by a scrap of black material drawn across his nose and mouth, then wrapped and knotted loosely behind his head. The ends are dirty, wet with rain water or some other filth. Still, it reminds Tim of the shemaghs guys in his unit used to wear, sometimes. 

Before he even thinks about how to communicate this sighting to Raylan--and, simultaneously, keep it secret from the surrounding security team--Tim just watches Barnes for a time. He doesn’t think twice about taking his attention off McKinney. The threat has already found him--found them all--but seems no closer to staging an attack than he does gathering his things and leaving. Barnes seems content--even _comfortable,_ which given his positioning seems impossible--to lie in wait. 

Tim does the same. He studies the only sliver of skin available to him: the furrowed brow between two curtains of dank-looking hair. Tim could put a bullet in the Winter Soldier’s brain and bring the manhunt to a screeching halt. Instead, he spends the next three hours watching Barnes. Just watching him, figuring him out. Three days is the longest Tim has ever waited out an individual target, but he’s used to getting a few hours with almost every life he’s taken. Before now, he’s only caught glimpses of Barnes, has even had more time with Barnes’ work than the man himself. 

So Tim watches Barnes shove two pastrami sandwiches into his mouth, then chew on the tasteless glob. Watches what he thinks is sleep; Barnes is sat upright, balanced perilously on the narrow branch, and keeps his head ducked into the hollow of his knees. Tim watches him keep that position ten, twenty, thirty minutes at a time. Then his head invariably jerks upward and he’s suddenly holding a knife and his eyes are especially wide and bright.

He seems willing to wait out the party. 

The lights are still on in the farmhouse, which Tim knows is a bad move, but rightly guesses that no hired hand is going to dish out orders to the man meant to pay him. Tim watches for movement in the house for a time, but when he looks back for Barnes, he finds the man has left his post. Tim swears.

Someone on the comms system asks, “Who was that?”

“Cool it, Mother Superior. I think I sliced my leg open on a nail.” Tim’s pleased enough with his lie and continues, “I’m gonna use my phone, see the damage. Don’t nobody fucking shoot me.”

For a second, the glare of his phone is too bright and Tim can’t focus. Then, because there’s no instruction Tim can offer, he only texts Raylan the facts: _[He’s here.]_

Tim settles in again to watch Barnes’ nest. He can see an assault rifle tethered to a broken branch but knows, too, that Barnes himself is a weapon. Tim’s search of the area surrounding the house becomes frantic. He doesn’t see a trace of the assassin. 

“How’s the leg?” A bored voice asks over the comms.

“Fine,” Tim mutters distractedly.

“Pussy,” someone else chimes in, then the chatter dies. 

When Barnes does return--and Tim doesn’t even see him approach the tree--he has an apple in hand, or something to that effect, stolen from the stables. He eats it, then pockets the core. It’s such a trivial errand that it makes Tim think twice about his own abilities going up against the master assassin. He’s _confident._ Tim sets his rifle sight to the side of Barnes’ head, but it’s a small comfort. 

Tim sucks in an uneasy breath. “All clear,” he says, like he has been saying, every hour on the hour. He resolves to keep a closer eye on Barnes, but knows that’s no long-term plan. The night could just as well end with Tim _watching_ Barnes squeeze the life out of another Hydra agent, then returning to Lexington to see his own career struggle for survival. Rachel would know. She would see through whatever lies he put in the report and instinctively _know_ that Tim could have stopped it. 

In the dark, alone with his thoughts and rattled by the actions of another, Tim doesn't even bother to read Raylan's return text. There's no miracle he could have managed in the last five hours, back when he and Tim parted ways in Lexington, hopelessness drawn on both their faces. 

Tim is drawn out of his thoughts when Barnes stirs, abandons his position flat against the branch to sit upright and back against his thighs. He rises like a snake, lithe and powerful, and when he looks at Tim-- _directly at him_ \--he's looking at prey.

Barnes pulls the makeshift mask from his face. There’s no expression there for Tim to observe, but the gesture itself seems as much of an invitation as it is a warning. In return, Tim pulls off his cap, which he normally wears backwards, but tonight has drawn low over his face to shield from the cold. Then Tim realizes he's still looking at Barnes through his sights, and switches to his scope. 

He watches Barnes’ hair fall into his face and finds it strangely disheartening that Barnes doesn't push it back. Tim considers himself a good judge of character, but knows searching for a glimpse of humanity in the Winter Soldier might prove too great a task. He's seen it in Taliban fighters, though, when they coax a starving dog closer to their camp and feed it scraps of kebab. In that respect, Tim's learned humanity isn't so difficult to find, no matter the crimes of its host. 

Not that it's ever stopped him taking a shot.

For Barnes, the value is derived from another. Tim can't get the heartbroken pleas of Steve Rogers out of his head, or the photo-precision sketches that speak of a lifetime of longing. He thinks if only Barnes had the capacity to understand Steve’s desperation, he’d stop. He’d drop out of the tree and walk to Detroit this very night. Tim wants to believe Barnes can _still_ do that, because it’s what Captain America believes. 

Tim wonders if Barnes has some superhuman ability to hear his thoughts, because he suddenly stands to attention. In the champion tree, he is perfectly balanced on a narrow branch while rising to his full height. He pulls something from his pocket--Tim briefly believes it to be the apple core--and chucks it at Tim. He has the strength to cover the distance, and aim is only secondary; he’s literally trying for the broad side of a barn. 

Tim has to fight the instinct to duck and cover. He knows he is not the Winter Soldier’s target, and he lets the item bounce and roll to a stop on the barn rooftop. Convinced it’s not a grenade, Tim reaches for and inspects the thing. It looks like an mp3 player, designed to fit to an ear. In the quiet of the country, Tim finds he can hear soft sounds emitting from the device. He recognizes the voice as Judge McKinney’s. 

_So_ , Tim determines, the Winter Soldier made a great showy break-in for the explicit purpose of driving McKinney to his country home, where the place was bugged. Barnes was becoming more discerning about his targets--not killing Wesley Arnett or any of the Dixie Mafia, who presumably only joined up for Hydra name recognition. They knew nothing. But _McKinney…_ Tim put the device to his ear and listened to the ravings of a man fearing for his own life. 

_“I’ve seen him in action. Hell, I helped craft one of his missions. Some Panamanian politician, fuck if I remember who. There was a laundry list of Juans and Pedros he took out for us back then--the good old days, when the president had a little respect for our cause. I always figured he’d lose it--think of it, 70 years of electroshock therapy. Back before we’d tested that shit on faggots and housewives, even. You hear what he’s been doing since D.C.? He’s on the warpath. He’s a goddamn disaster.”_

Tim listens as the man draws up frantic plans for escape. Whoever he is speaking to is a sympathetic ear, because he goes into a great deal of detail regarding the Winter Soldier and his murderous exploits. It’s a cruel commentary.

The device suddenly feels warm against Tim’s cheek. He removes it, only to find that the plastic base is slowly glowing brighter and brighter. Before Tim can think to cover the item or hurl it off the roof, the light is now no less powerful than a spotlight and--Tim’s stomach sinks--it serves its purpose. 

Barnes is effectively _pointing_ the skittish Hydra member and his entire security team in Tim’s direction. They’re going to shoot, Tim realizes, thinking they’ve got the Winter Soldier.

“Sniper!” Someone yells over the comms. Then, “It’s not, it’s one of ours--!”

The flashing-red earpiece is still transmitting from the house and McKinney is shouting down his hires, demanding an automatic weapon of his own. The next thing Tim hears is a spread of bullets pelting the barn’s wooden front. Bits of wood and chips of paint go flying into Tim's face. He ducks his head and screams into his own headset, “Don’t shoot!”

He sinks back on the roof to escape his position on its edge. “Don’t shoot! Friendly!”

But the bullets keep coming and it’s only by the saving grace of poor aim that Tim doesn’t take more than he does.

Two. He feels them hit like bee stings, at first. Sharp and with some bite, but perhaps not cause for alarm. Then Tim feels their weight like a anchor. They’re embedded deep in his flesh, alien and wrong. He doesn’t feel the familiar burn of a foreign object ripping through muscle, doesn’t experience the sense of finality that comes with an exit wound. 

Tim hears his name shouted on the headset now hanging loose around his neck. The security team scrambles, knowing its Tim McKinney is shooting at. It’s in this moment of terror and confusion that Barnes, unnoticed in the champion tree, takes his shot. It’s simple, clean--not like the others he’s tortured.

Tim can’t see anyone but the hired muscle scouring the house for the Winter Soldier. He yells into the comms, hoping to get confirmation on whether or not McKinney is hit. No one answers back and Tim swings a leg over the side of the building, searching in the dark for the ladder propped against its side. 

He’s several rungs down when a hand grabs his ankle, and he is _hurled_ off the ladder and onto the ground. 

No sooner is Tim able to catch the breath knocked out of him, the hand returns. He’s hoisted up and thrown against the side of the barn. Tim is speechless with confusion but soon, it becomes very apparent who is doing this--who _could_ do this. The Winter Soldier clasps his metal hand tight around Tim’s throat, immobilizing him. Because it’s as ingrained to him now as breathing, Tim hasn’t dropped his rifle. He raises it now, presses the muzzle into the man’s gut.

Tim's head is spinning. Barnes is crowding in on him and all Tim can think with his rifle in his hands is, that their positioning isn't so different from two horny kids at a middle school dance. 

_Save room for Jesus,_ Tim thinks dumbly.

“You’d be a good sniper,” Barnes says, completely impassive. “If you’d take your shot.”

Tim grinds out, “Yeah, you got Steve Rogers to thank for that," while pressing the end of his rifle a little harder into Barnes. He doesn’t intend to shoot--they _both_ know that--but Tim wants to make a point.

Barnes smells it before he sees it--the dark blossom of blood on the Deputy’s thigh, spreading open like a greedy hand. “You’re hit.”

What with the whole being _thrown from the roof of a barn_ thing, Tim had forgotten. “Is it bad?"

Barnes can feel the muscles in the man’s throat contort as he speaks. 

“You want me to relay a message?” Tim thinks it’s about time he start bargaining for his life. 

Barnes narrows his eyes and tightens his grip around Tim’s throat. He waits until the Deputy’s face turns colorless, his eyes lose their steely focus, his arms go slack and--finally--he drops the rifle. 

“That should suffice.”

It’s not until he hits the cold earth that Tim loses consciousness. 

\- 

The Winter Soldier watches from a distance as the private security forces search the empty farmhouse for him. Eventually they find the Deputy U.S. Marshal on the lawn, slumped against the barn, somehow both covered in blood and colorless. 

The Winter Soldier does not hide in the stables; he tried that earlier and his presence only seemed to upset the horses. Instead, he goes to a place on the property where the wooded area is severed by a dirt road. The police and ambulance will use it, and if he so chooses, Barnes can catch a ride back into the city on the top of an SUV or ambulance. 

In the meantime, the Winter Soldier fits his head around _that name,_ the one that he can’t seem to escape. _Steve Rogers._ Had the Deputy been his envoy? Weak and inherently a poor choice, but nonetheless meant as a piece of correspondence? 

The authorities arrive quickly, their sirens flashing red and blue, their brights cutting through the darkness like a sliver of daylight. The Winter Soldier huffs, annoyed with the display.

Still, when the vehicles collect the dead and wounded, he follows. The Winter Soldier doesn’t have anyplace else to be. At least in Kentucky, his work is finished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember how I said this might be the final chapter? Not so! This last leg got a little lengthy, so there will be one more chapter and then a small epilogue. 
> 
> Thanks, as aways, for reading. :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feelings! Everywhere, feelings are felt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and commenting, friends! Check the end note on this one.

When Tim awakens, he doesn’t open his eyes. They’re crusted shut, eyelids fat and sweaty-feeling. He attempts to rub at them, but only manages to awkwardly bump his palm against his forehead, slide his fingers into unwashed hair.

After finally wrenching a bleary eye open, Tim takes stock of his body as best he can. His head is killing him; he feels that it is positioned unnaturally on his shoulders and wonders if his neck if broken. The only blessing is that he feels a tremendous amount of pain in his right leg.

_It’s still there._

He blinks a few times, reminds himself that he’s a Deputy U.S. Marshal in a hospital room, not a soldier being seen to by a combat medic on the same cold earth he was wounded on. Tim finds he has to remind himself of this fact several times over.

He spies Raylan in a corner of the room, hat pulled low and attention narrowed in on the screen of his smart phone. The decor looks familiar, and Tim quickly determines that he’s back in Lexington, which means one of two things: his wounds were such that he required more capable treatment than could be found in the country, or transportation was not an issue and his relocation was done as a courtesy. He hopes for the latter, but whatever the case may be, he’s glad to be home. He sighs and Raylan looks up, smiles encouragingly. 

Tim shifts, instinctively wanting to rise now that he has awoken. “Oh, Christ. How long was I out? _Decades?_ You’re so old, Raylan. So old.” Tim reaches out with one hand and pretends to stroke Raylan’s face. Raylan, to his credit, has at least put away his phone as he’s come to stand by Tim’s bedside. 

“Can I get you a bone marrow transplant while you’re here?” Tim is determined to speak, despite how terrible his voice sounds.

Raylan isn’t so amused by the effort. “Be nice, or I’ll tell your other visitors you’re dead.” 

“Other visitors?" Tim rasps, pawing at his throat like he still feels that vice-like grip. He’s wearing a brace but beyond that, Tim is sure, is some spectacular bruising. "Is it literally _anyone_ with morphine?” All joking aside, Tim winces. “Is it Rachel?”

“She’s been by,” Raylan says with a curt nod. Tim takes that as, _she’s not here now,_ and unceremoniously strips off his blanket and inspects his leg. Raylan watches him poke and prod at the aggravated flesh. “You’re just rolling around in a bigger mess, here. _You_ and all those top-notch security guys lined up, and Judge McKinney still bites it.” Raylan sighs, then makes Tim’s argument for him: “We did warn her.”

“McKinney started the shoot out,” Tim says. His focus is on his leg, the bandages, and what ugly, twisted scars might rest beneath them. “The confusion. It’s on him.”

Raylan raises an eyebrow. “That what you’re gonna say when Rachel asks about the Winter Soldier?” There’s a commendable spread of hospital food on a tray balanced on the corner of the bedside table. He shifts through the contents. 

“Yeah. Practicing my lines on you. Believe me?”

“I can take one look at your neck and know better, Tim.”

“Oh, this? Little autoerotic asphyxiation mishap, is all. Forgot my safeword. _Clementine,_ by the way.” 

But Tim is less interested in his neck than his leg, at the moment. He inches his fingernails under the tightly-wrapped gauze, but decides against getting an eyeful of the damage, just yet. Where the flesh isn’t bruised or red, it’s unusually smooth. Tim frowns, eyes traveling down the length of his leg and to his foot, and asks distractedly, “Why’d they shave the whole thing?” And for a follow-up directed at Raylan, “Are you eating my pudding?” 

“Yeah,” Raylan says, licking the spoon clean. “What’re’ya gonna do about it?”

Tim covers his leg. “Hand me my chart?”

He skims the first two pages. The damage to his leg isn’t what he was hoping for in terms of flesh wound, but it’ll heal and with a some physical therapy, ought to function normally in a few months’ time. He absently rubs the length of his thigh, not feeling much of anything, thinking _nerve damage_ but eyeing the morphine drip and praying otherwise. 

Tim raises that hand and digs his fingers into the neck brace until he finds the velcro straps. He yanks the thing off, despite Raylan’s protests. 

“It ain’t broke,” Tim mutters. There’s a thread of triumph in his voice, as if that fact surprised him, given the level of pain. 

Raylan winces now that Tim’s neck is bare. “It looked better before,” he warns. He disappears into the small adjoined bathroom and returns with a hand mirror for Tim. 

It’s a grisly sight. The colors alone are incredible--Tim’s never seen such brilliant shades of purple and blue before--but what’s truly spectacular is the _shape._ If it wasn’t a cybernetic arm responsible for the marks, Tim suspects any rag-tag CSI spinoff could lift fingerprints off the display. The whites of his eyes are pinkish and spotted, his lips chapped due to the dry, circulated hospital air. 

“You ain’t kidding,” Tim mutters, and paws at the bed for the discarded brace, fully intending to wear it. Just as he gets a grip on the thing, the door is knocked on and then gently pushed open.

Captain America ducks his head into the room. Tim thinks Sam might follow, or is chatting up Rachel in the hallway, but the young veteran never makes an appearance. With Steve in the room, Tim's demeanor changes instantly. He tries to sit up straight, but his movements are limited. 

"What's the damage, soldier?" Steve asks, although much of it is glaringly apparent. He steps into the room confidently, like he’s back in his show tights and spangles ( _there were never spangles_ ), visiting for the sole purpose of lifting Tim’s spirits. 

Tim looks quizzically at Raylan like he’s intentionally been left out of the loop. “Did Raylan get ahold of you in time?”

Steve frowns. Tim waves a hand. If Steve had been able to intercept Barnes, Tim doubts the super soldier would abandon the chase to watch some mere mortal amass bedsores in a poorly-lit hospital room.

“Guess not.” Tim tries--and fails--to ignore the way his voice sounds like he’s smoked a pack a day since he was out of diapers. Even his breathing is labored, siphoned and weak.

“Sam and I heard there was a disturbance--a U.S. Marshal shot in the line of duty. So we came back.” Steve is unabashedly staring at the mottled spread on Tim’s throat. 

“Did you think it was Barnes who shot me?”

“Only until we learned you were still alive,” Steve says, and Tim has the good sense to appreciate his dark humor. 

“He left half of the Hollywood Walk of Fame on my throat,” Tim jokes, figuring he’ll be wearing the absurd handprint for some time and he’d better have a good attitude about it. “But no, he didn’t shoot me. Didn’t pull the trigger, anyway.”

 _It was a dirty trick,_ Tim decides. The flashing light triggered on the listening device. Dirty, but effective.

“Did he say anything?” Steve has his priorities, none of which are Tim at the moment. A flash of chagrin crosses his face, but Tim doesn't allow Steve to linger on it. It doesn't matter. 

Tim relays the “message,” and it gets an amused snort out of Raylan. 

Steve looks troubled by the exchange, which Tim is again sorry for. He corrals his voice and gives his best smile, saying dryly, "I'm fine, by the way. Thanks for asking."

"I knew you'd be," Steve says, calm and assured. He continues, "We got a guy like you," and Tim thinks he might swoon. He knows his face and neck--where they aren't black and blue--are bright red. 

Raylan, undoubtedly feeling like a third wheel, plucks the second pudding cup from Tim’s tray and takes his leave.

Tim feels he owes Steve every little detail, no matter how minute. He knows he'd want the same. Tim sips from a cup of water and continues, "I watched him for a while. He likes pastrami sandwiches. He sleeps like the dead, but only a few minutes at a time. Ten, twenty minute stints. When he kills people, he's concise. That’s less the case when he's torturing them, but that ain't the point, here. He seems..." Tim hesitates. It was so clear in his mind, the sentiment, but putting his voice to it feels insufficient. "...Helpless to stop."

When Steve nods, he seems almost relieved. 

"How long were you watching him?"

Tim takes it for an accusation. It isn't. "You got a hotline I should call?" 

"I'm just..." Curious. Jealous. Steve isn't sure which takes top billing.

Tim takes another sip of water, despite the burn. "Couple of hours." 

Steve looks at him like he's desperate for more, as though Tim is so fortunate to have the time he did staring Barnes down from a freezing rooftop. 

"He doesn't scare easy," Tim tries. "Or maybe that's just 'cause I don't pose much of a threat. He was watching me, too." Tim wets his lips. "He made a steep drop. Is he--like you?" 

"I think so," Steve says quietly. "That's still something he needs convincing on." 

"When I mentioned your name," Tim says, "He looked sad." 

Steve does something Tim hasn’t seen him do before. He takes off his hat--his disguise--and covers his face with his hands. He drops, slowly, to the bed. When he next speaks, he’s facing the wall. Tim can only watch the rise and fall of his back and listen to his words, each dug out from some faraway place deep within himself. “I went through Basic same as everyone else. Well,” Steve rubs his face again. “Not so easily. I never really specialized in anything, particularly when I was wearing spandex and selling bonds.” 

Tim doesn’t believe that to be true. He knows Steve studied strategy and warfare. At least, that’s what he read in a _The More You Know_ infobox in his high school history textbook. 

“When I got there--war--everyone seemed… they knew what they were doing. So I started doing what I knew I could do. I didn’t think about it much at the time, what Bucky was doing. _Soldiering,_ I figured. His duty. I knew if a fella I didn’t see coming suddenly dropped, that was Bucky, having my back. But, uhm,” Steve turns and looks at Tim searchingly. Tim’s worried whatever Steve’s preparing himself to ask, he doesn’t have the answer to it. Tim, admittedly, doesn’t know much about Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes beyond the bare mythology. 

“Do snipers talk to themselves? When they’re… waiting?”

The question surprises him, to say the least.

“He didn’t,” Tim says. The look on Steve’s face is heartbreaking, and Tim doesn’t know how or if it even helps, but he adds: “I don’t. It’s not a--”

But Steve interrupts him, takes on an almost argumentative tone, as if he means to convince Tim beyond what he’s seen for himself. “He was always talking, when we were kids. To himself, mostly, until he found an audience. Me, heck--every fella in the schoolyard, even the older boys. Then girls--a lotta girls--and then he became a sergeant and…” Steve catches himself rambling and shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I just thought…”

“Yeah.” Like he told Sam, _Tim gets it._ He may not share the particulars--a sad-eyed, beautiful boy grown into a striking young man; a lifelong friend swept up in a war not of his making, then enveloped in Steve’s heroics, and finally conscripted into some shadowy organization people nowadays believe to be lost to the annals of time. No, Tim only knows the half of it: the crippling loss of a friend, though not the _getting him back_ part--damaged and brutalized, if at all. 

Still, as far divorced he is from the concept, Tim nonetheless has the feeling he’s being pressed for his input. 

Tim thinks about what will happen when Steve eventually _does_ catch up with Barnes. What he’ll say, what end game he has planned. With Steve Rogers as his captive audience, Tim finds himself speaking. His voice is scratchy and low, his commentary winding, but he means to make a broader point.

“When you train to be a sniper,” he begins, “You try to practice on realistic targets. You watch ketchup explode out of a cabbage head enough times, or something shaped like a person… so that maybe the real thing won’t be some great gesture--it’ll just be routine. And sometimes you tell yourself a story, make a deal the target ain’t aware of. _‘If he picks up that cup of tea, he’s dead.’_ ” Steve nods, interested with anything even remotely related to his friend’s state of mind. 

Tim realizes this, and is sorry to continue: “Your friend was conditioned for this by his own, first.” Tim wants to say that when Hydra took Bucky Barnes, scavenged his broken body from a snowy cliff face, he was already a killer. He doesn’t want the two conflated--the skills Barnes acquired as a soldier, and the targets Hydra set him upon.

Steve shakes his head slowly, but his words come fast and sharp. “You don’t--you don’t _know._ What they did to him, even before…” But Steve reigns himself in, remembers that not every conversation about Bucky Barnes needs to be in his glowing defense. He’s not on trial, here. 

“Denial defense mechanisms,” Steve says, ignoring Tim’s latter point in favor of an earlier one. “Sam’s talked about it in some of the sessions he leads. He knows a lot about men and women… coming back. Trying to.”

“So he’s explained to you that maybe what you want to fix is hardwired, now?” Tim’s thankful for an opening to arrive at his point--the sorry truth that there’s no coming back from what Barnes has done. 

“Is it?” Steve is very specifically asking _Tim_ for his own personal answer.

Tim looks at him. Blue eyes, blonde hair, a jaw like steel. The guy has been on cereal boxes. Tim can’t lie to a guy who’s been on _cereal boxes._

So with a nod, Tim answers honestly, _yes_ , and he can’t figure which is worse: the way revealing himself in this way makes him feel so ashamed and like such a colossal failure, or the look on Steve’s face. He’s leaning towards the latter. 

“Look,” Tim tries again. His throat hurts more now than it did when Bucky Barnes was crushing it. “Maybe that’s just me. Maybe that’s just a lot of us. But, maybe ‘cause he’s got you…” Tim trails off, but Steve is alert, desperate for Tim’s words of encouragement, no matter how forced. 

Tim finds--surprisingly--they aren’t forced. He speaks and believes his own rosy sentiment. It’s _Captain America_ for Christ’s sake. “You can bring him back from that.” 

There’s chatter in the hallway--Tim figures some of the office has come by to wish him a speedy recovery or, like Raylan, pilfer from his lunch tray. He doesn’t bat an eye; his attention is on Steve.

“There are cracks,” Steve says, low and thoughtful and in no small part to himself, “In the programming. That’s what Sam thinks. That’s why he broke into Sam’s place, into yours. He’s still trying to protect me, like he’s always done.” As he speaks, Steve’s crushing sentiments are pulled together into a kind of determination, solidified with forgiveness. “ _That’s_ hardwired.”

It’s the final word on the matter. Bucky Barnes _will_ be saved, because he is deserving, because Steve Rogers _knows he is._ Still, with a hole through his leg and some unnecessary color to his complexion, Tim can’t find it within himself to appreciate Steve’s nuance. 

“Are you even trying to stop him?” It was Raylan’s question first but now, since becoming better acquainted to the villainous types Barnes is hunting, Tim’s adopted it as his own. “Seems to me he's doing what you won't.”

Steve doesn’t take the bait. “I want to help him... Not have to do that.”

Tim doesn’t press the issue, finding in fact that he doesn’t want to know either way. He understands Barnes’ mission, sympathizes with Steve’s moral dilemma, and knows he’s not in any position to judge. He looks towards the future, then, for Steve. “Sam told me you… cleaned house. Uh, with the Strategic… Homeland… Claire Danes-whatever-Division. And that you're considering your options outside the Army.”

Steve quirks a half-smile. “Sam told you all that?” 

Tim shrugs. It's a long drive from Harlan to Lexington. “It worked out well enough for me.”

Steve’s smile grows. “Yeah, I really want to be in your shoes right now.” 

Tim bites the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning, then deadpans, “Man oh man. Captain America is a _dick._ ”

Steve laughs. “You know, I think when I find him, we’ll both do that. Consider our options.” 

Steve’s smile turns small, secretive. He’s still sat on the side of Tim’s bed, but has shifted just enough that he’s no longer speaking to a wall. “Sam says I don’t look it, but I’m confident. I’m sure we’ll find him. I’m sure he’ll get to a point--eventually--where the answers he wants can come from me, not someone he knows is lying to him to save their own skin.” Steve draws in a slow breath. “It’s been a few months and we’re only now getting close to him, but,” he shakes his head. “All of a sudden, I feel every one of those 70 years we’ve been apart.” 

Tim doesn’t know how to respond to that, but his silence is taken in stride. Steve stands, paints on a smile, and extends his hand. They shake and share a look of mutual understanding.

“Oh,” Steve starts. “Here.” He pulls a scrap of paper from his jeans pocket and passes it to Tim. “My number. And Sam’s. He wants you to know he’s available, anytime you want to talk.” 

Tim takes the paper, a little shame-faced.

“He’s a quick study,” Steve agrees, and again dons his disguise. 

“I won’t--bother you.”

“You won’t be,” Steve says, then quirks a bemused smile, like he’s just figuring something out. “You think we’ve got a boy in every port?” 

Tim isn’t sure what it is about the comment that seems to slow the blood in his veins, lay waste to his capacity to throw off his discomfort with a thin-lipped smirk and wry comment. He sits dumbly, mute and ashamed in a way he’s ashamed to feel, and all the while Steve merely continues to look over him appraisingly. Like he doesn’t see it, _like he doesn’t know._

“You came through for us. You and Raylan both. So. Thanks.” Another smile, a nod.

Steve Rogers holds the door open for a nurse-- _of course he does_ \--and then disappears unnoticed by the mass of U.S. Marshals crowding the halls. 

“You’re looking much better.” The nurse is young, fit, with a drooping ponytail that speaks to her long hours, despite the fact that it’s not yet mid-morning. Tim can see from the dry erase board on the wall that her name is Christie, spelled with stars above the i’s. “Who was that?”

Tim closes his eyes. “A bona fide war hero.”

“Someone told me that’s what you are.”

“Not in his company, so much.” 

Christie with two stars shrugs, pulls up a stool and throws off the sheets. She’s here to inspect Tim’s leg. “I don’t believe that,” she says, her tone keyed up and friendly. “But I think it’s real nice that you guys stick together even after getting back.”

“I didn’t serve with him,” Tim says, keeping the amusement out of his voice. It takes a moment of Christie inspecting his leg and humming before Tim realizes the comment wasn’t for him. “You got somebody over there?” he asks. “Boyfriend… girlfriend?”

“My brother,” Christie corrects, then adds with a wink, “My girlfriend works in pediatric.” 

She smooths the bed out and rests her hands on her hips, looks Tim over. “You up for some visitors?”

“Sure. Hey, can you, uh--” Tim’s fingertips brush against the neck brace. It’s rolled too far down the bed for him to reach. 

Christie snatches it up at once and fits the thing around Tim’s neck. “Oh, thank god. It looks so much worse without it.”

\- 

Sam will never get used to this. He'll never find the charm in Steve saying he'll "meet him" en route to some gas station. It amounts to Sam watching for hitchhikers and invariably finding Steve in the mix, hands in his pockets, head tilted back to watch the rolling skies. He pulls over and Steve climbs in. They don't exchange words, making it all the more clandestine. Steve claims he likes walking, and Sam supposes he can't fault his friend for that. He merely questions his friend’s choice of disappearing down trashed highways and underpasses. Sam wants to explain to Steve why he doesn't like the image, but that requires a historically rebelling of the Vietnam war and its aftermath, and Steve is burdened with enough war stories to last lifetimes. 

“How is he?” Sam asks, wishing he’d gone to the hospital with Steve. But there were still more names to check, the proper… _authorities_ to call. He’s been playing phone-tag with Natasha for the better part of two hours, trying to get the wider web of Kentucky-based Hydra under her thumb.

“Good,” Steve says. “I think he might actually call.”

“Yeah?” Sam is genuinely surprised.

“Yeah,” Steve laughs, a little insulted. “I’m a good reference.”

Although the proximity of the car is familiar, Sam feels Steve to be distant. He decides it's his own doing, and pulls over to the side of the road not long after they've gassed up. He reaches into his coat pocket and produces the scribbles from Barnes’ backpack, the newspaper clipping of Steve, and the ticket to the Smithsonian.

Steve marvels at the treasures. To see Barnes’ handwriting again literally takes the air from his lungs. It’s mostly blocky Russian, but the writing devolves into the odd loopy lettering Steve remembers from their shared boyhood. The picture of himself and the ticket are important clues, but Steve can hardly pull his attention from the samples of writing, the surest evidence Steve has that his friend is not so far gone.

"He's looking for you, too," Sam says. It’s a fair read on the items. "Maybe we should stop, Steve. And just wait for him a while."

Steve smooths out the crumpled paper, hides some of the Russian under his thumb. He doesn’t look at Sam when he speaks. “He’s got to know I’m trying. I let him fall once before, Sam. I’ve got to be there for him, this time.”

Sam doesn’t return to the road, doesn’t trudge on to Detroit. He knows he will--if not his help, Captain America needs his company, and Sam’s done more for less. But for the time being, he lets his hands rest on the wheel, stares steady down the side of the road. He studies the gravel and yellow sprigs of dying grass. Sam knows how easy it would be to leave, but still can’t envision himself exiting the car, helping Steve lower his motorcycle from the truck bed, and then driving himself to the nearest airport and going home.

He can’t envision _this,_ though, for much longer. The bad diner food and smell of exhaust cycled back into the car, the penetrating cold and ceaseless wet of early winter. Steve’s guilt-fueled desperation, the bloody trail they’re forced to follow.

“I’ve got an aunt and uncle in Detroit,” Sam says. “We should swing by, have a nice meal for once.” 

“Swell,” Steve affirms, but his heart isn’t in it. 

Sam starts to pull back onto the road when Steve speaks: “I loved him, Sam.”

In Steve’s mind, it’s an unprompted declaration. For Sam, it’s an answer to the question he’s been asking for months. 

“Yeah?” Sam prompts gently. 

Steve nods and doesn’t take his eyes off the spread of documents in his lap. “He’s my best friend and I failed him and I love him.” Every statement feels, to Steve, like a contradiction. 

Sam shifts in his seat and puts a hand on Steve’s shoulder. Steve stills under his touch, but Sam doesn’t retreat. He gives an encouraging squeeze, hopeful that Steve will finally avail himself of their friendship, maybe voice this tightly-kept secret. Steve takes off his hat, twists the bill between his hands until the thing is practically unrecognizable. 

“Worst part is, I think he loved me too.”

\- 

The Winter Soldier doesn't go to Detroit. 

From the farmhouse, he alternately walks and steals the odd vehicle from a gas station, eventually arriving back in Lexington by the late afternoon. His thoughts should be on Hydra, the road ahead, his next target. But a man’s familiar face is quick to re-enter his mind, and another walking spell takes him to the VFW club. He enters unnoticed through a back door, settles in where he saw Steve Rogers sitting some nights ago.

He stays for four hours, growing more and more frustrated with every passing minute. 

Steve Rogers sat here not two days ago, and the Winter Soldier can’t remember why the hell he should care.

\- 

Tim’s not sleeping well. It’s his fourth day away from home and he feels like an anxious kid at summer camp, with the exception that he’s a grown man and has never been to summer camp. 

He’s burned through the books brought by his colleagues--some as jokes, others more to his tastes--and is moving on to things provided to him by the nurses. The latest is a Mary Sarton novel, _A Reckoning,_ about an elderly woman dying of cancer. The pages smell funny and Tim gets the impression it once belonged to a patient. 

He finished it an hour ago, then shortly after that stopped sniffing the pages. 

His room is dark and the door is closed to the hallway, where some fluorescent lighting still buzzes overhead and rubber-soled sneakers squeak by. 

Tim's finally closed his eyes when a blaze of light spills into the room, and just as quickly disappears. He sits up, expecting a nurse. 

He sees, instead, the Winter Soldier. 

He’s wearing the same pants, shirt, and zipped sweatshirt as Tim last saw him in. The large coat and ragged scarf are gone--lost, maybe--and his long hair is wet and plastered to his forehead. All the color seems drawn into the center of his face, concentrated on a raw nose, shiny lips, and red lining the corners of his eyes. He looks like the ghost Rogers believes him to be.

He stands unmoving in the doorway, like a vision from a nightmare. He is a presence, but not in the way Tim understands Steve Rogers or Raylan Givens to be. The Winter Soldier does not command attention. It’s only when he is confronting a target that he makes himself known.

Tim isn’t sure how he feels about that, just now.

“Hey,” Tim says, if only to try out his voice. He doesn’t have a follow-up question. 

Staring at his unannounced visitor, Tim focuses on the eyes. He searches for something--anything, familiar or not. Even seeing the cold sniper stare he wears as his own would have been welcome. Instead, he doesn’t see any of that. Just… large, sad eyes. Empty, hollow. Tim doesn’t know quite what he’s staring into. It scares him.

The Winter Soldier-- _Bucky Barnes_ \--flexes his hands. Tim only sees the one, gleaming bright and metallic in the orange streetlamp light bleeding in through the hospital windows. It’s a fantastic piece of engineering--Tim knew as much, given his up-close and personal demonstration. Even in a time that now harbored Gods and heroes and conspiracy, the things still seemed otherworldly. 

His eyes are constantly searching the room, searching _Tim._ “I thought he’d be here.”

It’s as if the breath Barnes spends on those words is taken out of his body twice over: There’s the mental extraction--he looks completely lost--and the physical one. The soaked shoulder of Barnes’ sweater droops and Tim sees a flash of pale, human flesh before Barnes yanks it back into place. But the damage is done, and suddenly Tim isn’t so frightened. 

He wets his lips, asks rhetorically, “At three in the morning?” 

This strategic killer doesn’t really believe Captain America would tend to the bedside of some passing acquaintance. No, Barnes is lying through his teeth: he hoped Steve would be there. 

“I know him,” Barnes says. It’s at once so assured and so confused. Somewhere beyond his sharp eye and steady hand, he’s reeling. Barnes has only the cold comfort of a single direction, but the sun is spinning overhead and he’s flailing, unhinged from earth and reason and logic.

At least, that’s what Tim sees in Barnes’ vacant expression and tense stance. It looks to Tim like the man hears screaming, or is being screamed at-- _constantly_ \--by some unknown source. He thinks about the electroshock therapy so casually mentioned by McKinney, and all other nature of treatments meant to divorce Barnes from his body and mind. Some of which, Tim reasons, are known to every well-groomed soldier.

But a soldier isn’t all he sees in Barnes. His demeanor, his inability to state his purpose… the second Tim thinks _kicked dog,_ he can’t get it out of his head.

“Turn on the light,” Tim takes a stab at instructing the Winter Soldier while attempting to sit up. When the room remains dark Tim implores, “Please? This is… fucking creepy.”

Barnes turns on the light, but closes the door.

“He’s looking for you. In Detroit,” Tim swallows through the pain in his throat. He doesn't actually know that they've taken at route, so he amends, “Or thereabouts.” 

Barnes nods. Or, Tim thinks he does. The curtain of matted and unwashed hair shifts forward and swallows up his once-handsome features. 

“He can help you,” Tim tries. “He has… answers.” 

Tim gives a thought to how often the Winter Soldier has heard that line, and corrects himself: “He _wants_ to help you.”

Barnes takes a few silent steps forward. He closes in on Tim, stopping just short of the very foot of the hospital bed.

Tim can see his features clearly now. Beneath the severity of his stare--enhanced by his furrowed brow and set jaw--Barnes’ features are almost… delicate. He looks exactly as Steve Rogers drew him, even the eyes: sharp, but colorless, and shaded by thick lashes. If Barnes wasn’t standing, dripping, and breathing before him, Tim might have thought he was staring again at one of Steve’s pencil sketches. Tim noticed a trend in the drawings--a natural upturn of Barnes’ lips--that’s gone now, displaced by a twisted expression of constant pain and restless rage. 

It’s the kind of expression Tim knows better than to toy with, but he’s out of options. 

Tim jostles his foot at the end of the bed, nudging the white, knitted hospital blanket folded at his feet. “Take it,” he says encouragingly. “Your other one is… got dirty.”

Barnes does not move to take the blanket. He seems physically stalled, as though there’s something he won’t leave without seeing through. Tim takes an uneasy breath, then draws a hand out from under the covers and slowly makes for the wallet on his bedside table. Barnes watches him intently, but doesn’t go for the gun at his side. Tim supposes he’s already armed, so to speak--he could just as well strangle Tim again, more effectively.

Tim pulls a slip of paper from one of the folds, and sits up some to complete the gesture. 

“Here’s his phone number,” Tim says. Barnes stares blankly at Tim, who gropes for something else from the tabletop. “Here’s a phone.”

The hand that takes the phone is cold steel. Tim is unnerved by its touch, but also fascinated. The thing shifts, moves seamlessly to collect its prize. 

Barnes takes a step back and pockets Tim’s phone. He turns, takes the blanket, and silently disappears into the darkened hallway. 

Tim watches him go.

“Shit,” he says to the empty room. “My phone.” 

But Barnes returns not thirty seconds later, bypassing Tim completely and inspecting, instead, the small table on the opposite side of the room. On it is a fresh set of clothes Rachel undoubtedly brought from Tim’s work locker. Barnes, who doesn’t seem to miss a thing with respect to his targets, figures he and Tim are about the same size. Then he turns, stares at Tim until the Deputy Marshal figures the only thing that might make his bedridden self even _less_ of a threat is to raise his hands, emptied, in surrender of his clean laundry.

The gesture seems to do the trick. Barnes unceremoniously unzips the fly of the stolen canvas work pants, then allows them to drop to the linoleum floor. He’s wearing nothing beneath them, but the wet shirt hangs low and covers his front. He steps into Tim’s jeans and frowns, finding the fit snug, but acceptable. He discards the soiled shirt, but loses a sleeve in the process. It’s caught on the unholy ridge where flesh meets metal. There’s extensive scarring there--Tim can see it even in the dim light--and it reminds Tim of a particularly painful experience with a soldering iron in his youth. He imagines that pain as constant for Barnes, who has lived 70 years in and out of consciousness, held captive by minders who did not care whether or not he experienced the blinding pain of a tune-up. Although a masterful piece of work, the futuristic appendage has a parasitic relationship with its host. 

Barnes’ resentment of the limb seems apparent as he yanks the shredded fabric off, giving Tim a clear view of the thing. Tim wonders if it’s impolite to stare, which seems a novel concern, given that Barnes is half-naked. 

(Tim thinks absently about the last time he saw a naked man, and if it compared to _this._ He has to go back several months and settle on the sorry fact that it was his friend Mark, in the midst of a drug deal. Stood in his dealer’s living room in only his underwear, nervous with withdrawals… it was the last time Tim saw Mark alive.

Tim resolves then and there to see more naked men; these bizarre circumstances should be outliers, not the norm.)

Barnes pulls on a t-shirt--Tim’s--and a jacket--also Tim’s. It’s large enough to fit comfortably over the enhanced limb, which seems to Barnes a marvel--like he’s long had desires to better cover the thing, but never managed how. He smooths his flesh-and-bone hand along the buttons on the jacket. They’re a dark blue, nearly invisible against the fabric. He seems enamoured with them, like they hold some great promise. 

Barnes then looks sharply at the Deputy, who is at a complete loss for words. 

He thinks of a hasty reply: _Sure, yeah. Buttons. I like buttons. I love buttons._ He dismisses it just as quickly. It’d be a fine thing to say if he wants his _throat crushed._

Barnes stares at his protruding metal hand. Tim wants to tell him that if he thinks he has a single bejeweled glove stashed away, he is sorely mistaken.

With an the hospital blanket in one hand, Tim’s phone in the other, and a goodly sum of Tim’s wardrobe on his person, Barnes takes his leave.

Tim sits alone in his hospital room, calculating the cost of a single run-in with the Winter Soldier. 

A new security system for his apartment, bed furnishings, a good pair of jeans, a stylish jacket, a smart phone, his _temporary mobility_ … Tim loses count. He rubs his sore leg and closes his eyes.

_It was worth it,_ he thinks to himself, because Captain America shook his hand and called him soldier. 

\- 

Barnes drops unceremoniously into a chair in the waiting room. He’s already eyeballed the place; no one is taken notice of, there. It’s warmer than outdoors, too, where the rain is coming down again in heavy sheets. In his new wears, he feels eyes pass over him. He’s used to hiding, but not going unnoticed. It’s a strange new comfort, and he stays in the hospital longer than perhaps is wise.

Aside from a screaming child brought in around three, it’s quiet. While he doesn’t sleep, Barnes does allow himself to rest. Starting around seven, he watches the odd Deputy U.S. Marshal enter and ask after Tim Gutterson. At nine, a nurse approaches and hands him a cup of coffee, says she’s on her way out and noticed he’d been waiting all night. He’s careful to accept the offering, although his mind is racing through a familiar string of possibilities: _threat? opponent? terrorist? attack? maim? kill?_ But she’s tired-eyed and doesn’t spare him a second glance.

Barnes drinks the coffee slowly. He can’t remember the last time he’s had any.

When the building starts to buzz with activity, he leaves. Hugging the side of the hospital building to mask the use of both his hands, Barnes commits the number on the scrap of paper to memory, then sends a message before ducking out again into the chilly morning and pouring rain. It’s short and direct--an order.

As a pleasant surprise, the jacket is waterproof. The Winter Soldier spares a moment to commend himself for not killing the Deputy. Friends don’t bring waterproof jackets and skinny jeans for dead men.

The stolen phone vibrates in his jacket pocket. Barnes reads the message, but does not reply.

_[Bucky?]_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two things:  
> 1\. I’m going to humblebrag that the jacket Bucky takes from Tim totally exists in the show, and it is blue with huge buttons, and this entire thing was written for that moment alone, and I have no life. (Just kidding. I, like every other warm blooded human being, wanted to pants SebStan.)  
> 2\. I'm going back and forth on adding a (very) short epilogue. As it stands, this feels like an end point--Bucky reaching out to Steve--but I'm not certain I want it as The End. Opinions?


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything that once was lost comes home again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who would have guessed my teeny epilogue turned into an entire chapter? The _last_ chapter, but still. Further proof I have zero self control.

Steve approaches slowly, and alone--just as instructed. He took his motorcycle and told Sam to go on up to Detroit, visit his family, but he’s fairly certain he’s still in Lexington, and maybe not too far away. Hell, he could have followed Steve to the door of the VFW and wished him good luck, for all Steve knows. His focus belongs solely to this strange meeting, and all other impulses are made void by a singular quest: _38° 3' 53.816” N, 84° 31’ 23.224” W. Alone._

He finds the Winter Soldier boxed into a corner, looking like he might spring from it, guns blazing, if someone so much as smiles at him. There are four empty bottles of water placed in a neat line along the bar. He’s currently drinking something dark and paid for with a crumpled, forgotten twenty wrenched from the pocket of his recently acquired jeans. He finishes it when he spies Steve. 

“Two more, please,” Steve says to the wary-looking bartender as he comes to a stop a few feet away from his friend. His heart has jumped to his throat; he's never been this close to the assassin and not already shouting for him to come back. “Can I sit?”

The Winter Soldier doesn’t jam a knife into Steve’s side and take off, which Steve can only interpret as the warmest of welcomes. He sits, opting for the seat nearest the wall rather than corner his friend and block his exit. 

“You look good, Buck.” 

His clothes are clean and fitted, although his hair is more matted than when last Steve saw it. It’s something Steve can’t help but zero-in on; Bucky Barnes spent another lifetime looking out for him in similar respects, and Steve feels inclined now to do the same. _Are you eating?_ he wants to ask, never mind that Bucky may very well be raiding the pantries of his victims’ houses, absconding with jars of peanut butter and boxes of energy bars on a bi-weekly basis. It makes for a strange picture and Steve finds he can hardly stop staring. 

“The jacket is waterproof,” Bucky says, slow and meaningfully, like he’s given the response some real thought. 

“Yeah?”

Steve is sorry to realize he’s making small talk with the Winter Soldier. He can’t remember a time when talking to Bucky wasn’t, in itself, an adventure. On school days when neither boy could afford lunch, they discussed literature and philosophy, with Bucky purposefully arguing things to rile Steve, because Steve never lost his cool but always put up one hell of a fight. On winter nights when they didn't sleep for fear of freezing, they whispered their hopes for the future. If they weren't careful, they'd end up talking until sunrise. It wasn’t, Steve remembers, until Bucky was dressed sharp as a pin in his Army uniform and readying to ship out that their talk became distant, almost hesitant.

And by a very sorry set of circumstance, it’s become that again. 

They sit for a long time without speaking. Forget soul-searching conversations that consume an entire night's sleep; Steve starts to doubt Bucky will _ever_ speak to him again.

Bucky meets him halfway: he mumbles something incoherent. Steve leans in.

“Pardon?”

Bucky looks away when he answers. “You chase after me, demanding an audience. What do you want to say?”

 _Come home. I’m sorry. You can talk to me. I’m sorry. You don’t have to do this. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry._

Steve doesn’t think he can choose just one and when he opens his mouth to speak, finds that he doesn’t choose any. He blurts out: “Why do you torture them?”

Steadily, Bucky turns to face him. His expression is blank, yet somehow still severe. Steve fears he’s ruined his only opportunity.

“What I do is not torture.” Bucky speaks quietly and slowly, like he’s hesitant about how much he can get away with saying. It’s almost deceptively pleasing, but Steve cannot trade the gruesome imagery of mutilated bodies for Bucky Barnes’ hesitation. 

Steve shakes his head numbly. “They're dead, Buck. You... took arms, ears.”

“Then it would be torture to force them to live.”

 _With their deformities?_ Steve wants to ask, but figures it out for himself: with their wrong-doing, with their lies. He wants to sympathize with Bucky’s anger, and to an extent is able to do so, but he can understand without condoning. There’s a long, bloody trail behind Bucky Barnes. Steve knows--he’s spent the last six months following it. 

“You’ve got to stop, Buck,” Steve whispers. He scrubs at his beard, as if he can physically stop the words from forming in his mouth. “You’re gonna hate yourself if you don’t.” 

Bucky doesn’t take heed of Steve’s warning. He doesn’t seem to understand the threat.

Steve sighs. “Can I show you something?” He shrugs his backpack off and unzips it. This was meant to be his ace in the hole, but Bucky isn’t giving him any opportunities to invest in subtleties, first. He sets his sketchbook on the bartop, then catches Bucky’s eye and gives a weak smile. “Sam said this might be a good idea, and because I don’t have any photographs…”

He opens to a rough sketch of two boys sat on the sidewalk, their trousers too short for their growing frames--well, Bucky’s, anyway--trading marbles.

 _It’s us,_ he wants to say, but holds his tongue. The sentiment will be stronger, perhaps, if Bucky reaches it on his own. Given the unmoved expression on Bucky’s face, however, Steve grows less confident with every advancing page. 

“If you don’t want to--”

Bucky reaches out with his cybernetic arm and draws the sketchbook closer, then turns another page. Steve slowly returns his hands to his lap and allows his friend free reign of the book. He seems to recognize the more timely sketches--the ones of himself wielding a knife or an automatic weapon. Some light returns to his eyes as he slowly understands how he is seen to others. But, Steve notices with a hopeful rush in his heart, Bucky spends more time looking at-- _really studying_ \--the drawings of himself, before. It takes a while for Bucky to accept there is even a likeness, because this face doesn’t resemble his own. It’s always smiling--big and toothy, or curled and secretive. It’s distorting, like a scar cut across his face, the product of some accident that maybe took his hair, as well. 

But there is such detail, such _care_ with the drawings that Bucky is nonetheless drawn to them. He studies them like he would the floor plans prior to a mission. He learns each line, commits it to memory for as long as he’ll have it. 

He notices some of the notes, too. Steve has written things like, _Bucky and I at Coney Island, 1939_ and _Bucky and I at a baseball game, 1941._

There’s a drawing of Bucky, asleep in a medical tent, simply titled: _Germany._

Bucky sighs, frustrated. _Fabrications,_ he thinks shrewdly, but cannot commit to the anger. He's used to simple lies--a new name, but no face to match. He knows times and dates and locations. He knows how to handle a weapon and dispose of a body. None of his new memories are as intricate and the ones Steve is showing him, none so layered. _Our hair is wet but our clothes are dry. At the baseball game? The sun came out. Our coats are under our seats. We forget them and return well after midnight to retrieve them. We take the opportunity to run the bases. Steve walks the last two._

“Who is Bucky Barnes to you?” It’s a variation on a question the Winter Soldier has asked many times before--with bloody results.

Steve doesn’t answer right away, which is unusual, given how many quiet hours in any number of sleepless nights he’s dedicated to this very topic. _Friend_ and _companion_ seem somehow inadequate; a whisper where Steve would rather shout.

“Bucky Barnes is… everything. Everything I wanted to be, growing up. Everything I know a _hero_ to be.”

The Winter Soldier holds the Captain’s gaze and speaks firmly: “I am not that man.”

It breaks Steve apart. An old ache creeps through and cracks his voice, but Steve works to fortify the walls of his heart and pronounce himself. This is not just his only chance, it’s also Bucky’s.

“He’s my friend," Steve says, putting into the word all the strength and importance it deserves. “He trusts me, and I trust him.” Steve looks as though he might cry if Bucky doesn’t believe him. He continues, “A long time ago, he protected me.” 

_From villains,_ Steve thinks, remembering the schoolyard bullies, the bigger boys who didn’t like that he had both book smarts and courage. _From loneliness,_ he silently adds, because the only thing worse than being pummeled by thugs in an alleyway was being left alone to think he deserved it. Bucky Barnes was more than a friend, he was an indelible force of good at Steve's side. 

Steve looks upon Bucky Barnes with an earnestness and admiration even the addled mind of the Winter Soldier cannot misconstrue. “I’d like to return the favor.”

Bucky says nothing. He drops his head between his shoulders and stares at shiny bartop. He is feeling cornered and scared, yet knows his ingrained response is not applicable, here. He can’t go slack and surrender. There’s no mouthguard being shoved between his teeth, no braces fit across his body, binding him to a chair until the leather starts to soften and burn. He has to fit his mouth around words, now, not screams.

There’s nothing of Bucky’s experience that Steve can understand; Steve was given the physical manifestation of the strength he embodied. Bucky was torn asunder, stripped down and made into something simple. The hi-tech movements of his arm are misleading; there’s no strength in his gestures, only programming. 

More central to Steve’s being than any form or fashion of power, however, is kindness. It courses through his veins and feeds his empathetic nature.

It’s what Bucky hears when Steve next speaks--empathy, not judgement. 

“I know you want answers, Bucky. And names.” Steve draws off his cap, makes it so that he isn’t hiding anything from his friend. “I can’t give you all that but I can tell you something I know you-- _you_ \--would want to know.” Steve starts to put a hand on Bucky’s shoulder, but catches himself. His hands fold anxiously in his lap. “You fought so hard. You resisted for years, decades. You never stopped fighting them.”

Bucky frowns. “Until I did.”

“No, you didn’t--because _here you are._ ”

“Here you are,” Bucky murmurs. Steve thinks he hears inflection on the _you_ , thinks maybe Bucky isn’t just echoing him, but is in fact addressing _Steve,_ owing his freedom to _Steve._

And Steve doesn’t know what to say. He doubts Bucky Barnes needs reminding whose cause it was that first cost him an arm, then his mind. 

There are dark bags under Bucky’s eyes. Steve doesn’t know it, but he hasn’t truly slept in decades; his body only knew rest and reprieve when put in stasis, and it shows. He looks older than his conscious years suggest. Younger still for his stifled life, experienced in hot bursts of gunfire and cold bodies. He’s an entire body of contradictions. He seems to know it, too. 

Bucky’s hand tightens around his drink. He hasn’t taken a sip. It occurs to Steve that since sitting down with him, Bucky has hardly moved his weaponized limb. 

Steve frowns. “Are you hurt?”

Bucky shakes his head exactly once. “Broken,” he corrects.

“No,” Steve insists. “Never that.”

He is _adamant._

In as few words as possible, Bucky explains that this version wasn’t the arm he’d always had, and sometimes he didn’t have an arm at all. “They’d take it from me. Punishment.” Lines draw across Bucky’s face as he recalls the failed missions or mistakes or words spoken out of turn that led to such occasions. His metal hand finally wrenches open. He stares at it, palm-up and gleaming like a futuristic sea creature, poisoned and dead. “It didn’t feel like it.” 

Steve wants so much to hold that hand.

“This one doesn’t come off,” Bucky murmurs. The look on his face suggests that this is the true punishment.

Steve slips his hand into the curled fixture and squeezes, knowing full well that if Bucky wants to, he can crush every bone in Steve's hand.

He doesn’t.

He draws in a breath that seems to rattle his bones. Steve inches a little closer, his hand still in Bucky’s.

“We can go back,” Steve whispers it like a promise. “We can go home-- _Brooklyn._ ” When Bucky stills and then, slowly, lifts his hand away from Steve’s, Steve is quick to manage his expectations. “Or-- _anywhere._ We can go anywhere you want, Bucky.”

Bucky is quiet for a time. His eyes narrow as he says, “I am not done.” 

Steve’s heart sinks. “You can’t kill them all, Bucky.” He starts to panic. Although his voice doesn’t weaken and his palms aren’t sweating, Steve knows he’s lost his nerve. He starts making compromises. “Are you looking for someone in particular? Look. I’ve got a list, too.” 

Steve doesn’t know if he’ll trade a life for Bucky’s company, but believes he’s about to find out. 

Bucky mumbles something that gets lost in the curtain of hair and filth guarding his face. It sounds just familiar enough that Steve makes it out. 

“ _Alexander Pierce?_ ” Steve asks, and watches as Bucky Barnes goes slack, loses some of the fight he’s put against Steve. Instinctively, Steve is concerned for the response, and doesn’t spare the subject of conversation any niceties: “Alexander Pierce is dead. He was at the Triskelion when the Hellicarriers were taken down. Nick Fury shot him, killed him.”

Bucky turns to face Steve, to feel the very breath spent on those words against his face. His blank expression is filled suddenly with anguish and for the briefest of moments he looks terrified--eyes wide, lips parted. His chest starts to pound like he’s taking great gulps of air but his lips--gone pale now, no longer their healthy pink--hardly move. His cheeks remain shallow even as the rigid movements in his torso continue and Steve fears his friend is having some kind of fit. Suddenly, he stops. The sleepless months finally take their toll and he tips forward into Steve, catatonic, bruising into Steve’s shoulder. Steve moves instinctively to hold him. He wraps his arms around Bucky Barnes’ slumped form, enveloping him in a long-awaited embrace. 

“It’s okay, Bucky. Buck, it’s okay. We won’t have to go far.”

\- 

Tim wakes up with a hand at his throat. _His own,_ which he realizes faster and with much less breathless panic than the last time. With sleep-crusted eyes, he looks around the room, now always wary of some uninvited guest. 

With his wits about him, Tim breathes a sigh of relief. There’s not so much as a nurse in the room, let alone a master assassin. Still, with his fingertips grazing the length of his throat, Tim doesn’t necessarily feel alone.

There’s a mirror positioned on the wall across the room and if Tim sits up just right, he can see the damage. He has done away with the neck brace, although the bruising is still fantastic in its coloring. The handprint is still distinct; in fact, Tim thinks it’s grown. 

There’s harsher company, he knows, which is far more deserving of his apprehension. Yesterday he was officially questioned about the failed security detail for Judge McKinney, an hour-long process during which he kept his tell-tale bruises concealed. 

His explanation was simple-- _McKinney got spooked,_ probably by one of his own security people out on the property. He mistook Tim for the threat and opened fire. Tim subsequently fell from the building he was perched on, and blacked out. He’d lied with practice ease: _“I don’t know how McKinney got shot”_ and _“I’m sorry I couldn’t prevent it.”_

Rachel, who was in the room supervising, didn’t say a word. She thanked the officers for their time and Tim didn’t see her for the rest of the day, leaving Tim to wonder helplessly if she’d taken his job with her.

He’s surprised, then, that she and Raylan both use their lunch breaks to visit him the following afternoon. 

Raylan arrives first but Tim focuses solely on Rachel. He asks after their caseload, hoping to hear from her that there’s plenty for him to catch up on when he returns. She doesn’t break that easily, and instead tortures him with careless shrugs and tight smiles between delicate bites of sandwich and gulps of coffee. Tim stops asking after a while.

He sets his sights lower and mentions to Rachel that he could use a new set of clothes from his apartment, then adds quickly that Raylan should go as backup. 

Rachel doesn’t smile at that. “What do I need back-up for?” 

“You’re my boss, now. Can’t have my boss looking at my unmentionables.” Tim is impressed with what an apt liar he's become; Rachel, less so.

She finishes off her coffee. “Mm-hm. Where’d the clothes I brought you up and get to?”

Even Raylan turns around in his seat, interested. 

Tim scrubs at the three days’ worth of growth on his face. “Uhh… I made a charitable donation.”

Rachel raises an eyebrow. "Show of hands, how many here think I’m a complete _idiot?_ ” 

Wisely, neither of her colleagues raises so much as a pinky finger. She turns away from Tim in favor of her buzzing cell phone. 

“Keep your secrets, then. I’m going to tell the nurses to lower your morphine dose. _Chief Deputy Brooks._ ”

She disappears into the hallway to take the call. Raylan, in her absence, wholly expects the real explanation. He turns off the TV in Tim's room to drive the point home. 

“The Winter Soldier," Tim murmurs. "He came in here last night hoping to run into Captain America, of all people. Stole my pants and my phone and my fucking _peace of mind_ and, shit, I don’t know. Took off in his fucking Batmobile." 

“Batmobile?” Raylan echoes.

“Batcycle, right. _Stealth._ ”

Raylan frowns and tips his hat back. "Maybe Rachel's right about the morphine."

Tim is surprised that Raylan seems genuinely dismissive of his claims. He wriggles up in bed, careful of his leg and the fact that he’s only clothed in a flimsy hospital gown. "I'm serious, man."

Raylan’s sat awkwardly in the plastic visitor’s seat. His arms are folded and his long legs are splayed. He looks _physically_ skeptical. "He really come in here?"

"Yeah."

Raylan narrows his eyes. "Took off his clothes, put on yours?"

"Yeah!"

"He look good?"

" _Yeah--_ " Tim stops himself. Raylan’s smug, grinning face is just far enough away that if Tim really wants to punch it, he’ll have to accept ripping open his stitches. “Fuck. I died, didn’t I? And Hell is a ‘90s sitcom.” 

“Hell,” Raylan corrects while leaning over his chair to pat Tim’s good leg, “Is waiting an extra half-hour for your lunch when you know it’s out in the hall, drawing flies off some gurney.”

“That Raylan,” Tim muses aloud, “Always looking out for me.”

There’s an undercurrent of thanks, there, for something other than concern for his meal schedule that Raylan either doesn’t pick up on or ignores entirely. He lobs Tim a flat look. "I told the nurse to swap the pudding for soft serve." 

“Oh, what a nice treat for you.”

Raylan nods in agreement. “I figured I deserved a reward for babysitting you all morning.”

“You’ve been here twenty minutes.”

“Uh, if Rachel asks, I’ve been here since eight.”

“Eight,” Tim scoffs. “Make it seven.”

“Dawn,” Raylan grins.

Tim raises a hand like he’s swearing on a Bible. “Never left my bedside.”

In any other circumstance, Tim might have told Raylan to fuck off, that _no_ , he wasn’t going to lie to Rachel to cover Raylan’s ass. But today, he finds he doesn’t want to drive away his company so quickly. He isn’t as bored as he thought he’d be, laid up in a hospital bed. Instead he feels immeasurably anxious, although he has no explicit desires for his immediate release or even his timely recovery. It’s a strange feeling, not to know what he’s waiting for, let alone caring that he’s waiting for anything. 

Two minutes later, a round-faced nurse arrives with Tim’s lunch. Raylan stands and plucks the soft serve from the tray even before it’s sat at Tim’s bedside.

Under the soft serve is Tim's phone.

Tim grabs the thing and doesn’t quite get a question off before the nurse explains, "Oh, someone left it at the front desk this morning. Guess it took a little walk? You certainly didn't!" She laughs at her own joke and eyeballs Tim’s guest before letting herself out.

“He brought it back?” Tim murmurs to himself, disbelief softening the hard edge of his voice. He turns the device over in his hands, then turns it on. The battery is low but Tim can’t complain.

Raylan still needs some convincing. He’s taken the curled top of the ice cream off, but still has a full bowl. “The guy who shit on your pillow--”

“Shit on my blanket,” Tim corrects.

“--Borrowed, then _returned_ your phone?” Raylan shakes his head, snorts into his ice cream.

“The screen’s a little scratched,” Tim allows, but what he’s thinking is _yes, somehow. That’s exactly what happened._

He briefly entertains the thought that he hallucinated the entire encounter, but notices a new text message that suggests otherwise. The contact info of the sender has already been entered into his phone: _Steve Rogers, mobile._

 _[Thanks for lending your phone to the cause]_ the text reads. Another, send a minute later adds, _[Any other hotels with mafia ties we should know about? Wouldn’t want my friend to take out the wait staff.]_

There is, actually, one other. Tim gives the name and tells Steve to steer clear, then texts Sam Wilson--also a newly listed contact--with a suggestion of a nice place he heard about through the Lexington VA. A spread of cabins in the hills, if they’re still in the area. Quiet, isolated, beautiful. Management focuses their community outreach on veterans, regularly giving away package deals for week-long stays. Tim writes and rewrites his message, unsure of what Sam might read into the suggestion. 

He finishes lamely, _[Good if u need to decompress.]_

 _[Thanks man]_ Sam writes back. _[That’s just what they need.]_

Raylan’s moved on from Tim’s miraculously returned phone and is sat in a chair, legs up and crossed on the corner of Tim’s bed. He’s watching _The Price is Right_ and polishing off his bowl of ice cream. Tim, still lost in a state of wonder that his encounter with Captain America put him in the sights of a killer, then into a hospital bed, and now has him doling out vacation advice, can’t so much as speak. He considers showing Raylan the messages, but decides against it. The adventure is over and these last pieces of correspondence won’t, for Raylan, top playing backup for an American legend. 

Besides, the game of _Plinko_ is really heating up. Tim watches for a time, too, but his leg is aching and he can’t focus. He starts to rub at it absently, feeding the thing with just enough pain to work as a salve on the greater hurt. 

Raylan throws back an arm and punches up the morphine. Then he tips his hat, like he’s done the gentlemanly thing. He does this all without breaking his stare with the television screen.

Tim snorts softly and waits for the relief to hit. When it does, it’s near immeasurable. Tim supposes there are some compounding factors at work--the fact that he’s still alive, for one, after what amounts to another mission among soldiers. A _search and rescue,_ if he wants to get cute about it. There’s the sometimes-necessary reminder that he’s got friends, too, who will bother to fetch him a second set of clothes so he doesn’t have to wheel himself out of the hospital pinning a tissue paper-thin gown between his legs. Friends who will do more than keep a secret--they’ll make it so he doesn’t have to keep one. 

Whether its the morphine or not, Tim has to admit that’s reason enough to feel relieved.

The thought, at least, inspires one more text he sends to both Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson. 

_[I’m glad you found him.]_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that’s the end! I hope it was fun to read, because it was a hoot to write. It got away from me at times but I hope it reads coherently. :P 
> 
> Especially to those who are from one fandom or the other--thanks for taking a chance and reading! And many thanks to all those who commented. It always makes my day.


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